Dodi 'real target' in Diana tragedy

[madeupname452]

[nomo]

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/featu ... lace200802

Palace Intrigues

There hasn’t been a dull moment in London, what with Brad and Angelina at Claridge’s, Nigel Dempster’s memorial, the McCartney-Mills divorce proceedings, and not one but two huge royal dramas being played out. From courtroom testimony to private-party dishing, Dominick Dunne gets the latest on the British inquest into Princess Diana’s death, Mohamed Al Fayed’s fight to prove a conspiracy, and the sex-video blackmail at Buckingham Palace.

by Dominick Dunne February 2008

I’ve been spending a lot of time in London lately, and it’s a perfect place to be, as it’s going through good times. It’s as expensive as hell, the dollar stinks, but the parties are nightly, and restaurants are jammed, as are the theaters and the hotels. Brad and Angelina were staying at Claridge’s, where I was staying, and Martin, the great hall porter, found me a good seat, where I sat for 40 minutes, waiting to see them walk through the lobby as the paparazzi screamed at them from outside. One night there was a fire at the hotel, and the alarms rang at five in the morning—a terrifying sound. Four hundred guests in terry-cloth robes huddled outside on Brook Street for an hour and a half. It was like a cocktail party without the drinks, and everybody chatted with everybody. The fire turned out not to be serious and rated only a squib in a few gossip columns.

The Queen is in top form and she is enjoying a great popularity again. Many think Stephen Frears’s movie The Queen led to a new understanding of her. A charming novel by Alan Bennett called The Uncommon Reader, in which the Queen develops a love of books—Genet, Proust, and Lauren Bacall—is an enormous success. She looked glamorous for the State Opening of Parliament in a diamond crown and a cape trimmed in white fox. A few days later, on Remembrance Day, dressed all in black, she solemnly placed a wreath on the Cenotaph, London’s memorial to the war dead, followed by Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Prince William, and on and on through the royal family. A few days after that she and her husband celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary at Westminster Abbey.

The two biggest stories in London these days are about the royal family. One is the inquest into Princess Diana’s death. The other involves the blackmail of a “minor royal”—the first known case in a hundred years, but I’ll get back to that. The Diana story begins in Paris, where she and Dodi Al Fayed met their violent deaths on a late summer’s night in 1997 in the most famous car crash since the terrible accident that killed Princess Grace of Monaco. Dodi’s father, Mohamed, claims that his son’s death is the result of a conspiracy headed by Prince Philip, because he did not want the future King of England, Prince William, to have a Muslim brother or sister. (Despite the many rumors that Diana was pregnant, the autopsy proved she was not. The pregnancy story began with a photograph of Diana in a leopard-print bathing suit in which she did indeed look as if she were pregnant, but the picture was taken before she became romantically involved with Dodi.) Al Fayed is consumed by the idea that his son and Diana were murdered.

I have met Al Fayed before. About two years ago, I was at the Ritz in Paris following the Cannes Film Festival. My telephone rang and it was the general manager, Omer Acar, telling me that Al Fayed, who owns the hotel, was in Paris from London and would like to see me in the lobby. Although he is small of stature, he has an enormous presence. He walked with four guards around him. In London society, he is genuinely disliked, but I have seen a very kind and warm side to him. We met that day as fathers who had each lost a child to a terrible death. It is always a strong bond. I could see the extent of his grief for Dodi. Sadness emanated from him. He gave me his private phone numbers in London. Then he started going on about Prince Philip, in the manner of the obsessed. That day there was a rumor in an English paper that a considerable amount of money had been deposited into the bank account of Henri Paul, Diana and Dodi’s driver on the night of the crash. Al Fayed wanted the Queen and Prince Philip to take the stand at the inquest, which will never happen.

I found that there are many people in London who believe in the conspiracy, at least in part. Certainly there are confounding and fishy things surrounding the circumstances of the car crash. I simply don’t believe it was a conspiracy arranged by the royal family, but Al Fayed is spending millions and millions on some of the best lawyers in London. His principal lawyer, the high-profile Michael Mansfield, has been involved in some of Britain’s most controversial miscarriage-of-justice cases and is expected to call 68 witnesses to the stand. He is also pressing for members of the royal family to testify.

Last October I was back at the Ritz to watch the 11 English jurors from the inquest get into a bus on the Place Vendôme and take the ride into the Alma tunnel, the site of the crash. It is a creepy experience to drive through the tunnel. It’s like a shrine to the dead princess. “That’s where it happened,” someone always says when you pass the 13th pillar. I shuddered each time I drove through. Later, I watched the jurors walking through the grandeur of the Ritz Hotel, looking this way and that, re-tracing the steps of Diana and Dodi in the hours before the crash. They climbed up the winding staircase to the Imperial Suite, probably the most beautiful hotel suite in the world, where Diana and Dodi were staying, safe from the paparazzi outside, guards at their door, food from one of the great dining rooms in Paris available at a moment’s notice, everything they would need at their fingertips. After all, Dodi’s father owned the hotel, and Diana was the mother of the future King of England. They were at that time the most famous and pursued couple in the world. One of the great mysteries of the story to me is why, amid such total safety and with the full knowledge that the paparazzi were waiting to pounce on them outside, they would decide to leave the Ritz and go to Dodi’s apartment near the Arc de Triomphe, in the Eighth Arrondissement, at 11 o’clock at night. What was better at Dodi’s than what they had at the Ritz? They were tempting the gods.

The night I arrived in Paris I ran into some English friends, and we all went into the Ritz Bar quite late. One of them said, “Oh, let me introduce you to the guy who served Henri Paul the drinks before he drove the Mercedes with Diana and Dodi.” Ten years have gone by and people talk about the accident casually. There are no longer hushed tones.

Henri Paul’s blood-alcohol level was three times the French limit when he got behind the wheel of the Mercedes. He was not a chauffeur; he was the acting head of security at the Ritz for Dodi’s father. He had not driven a big Mercedes before, nor did he have a license to drive a hired car. It was a last-minute change of plans by Dodi, tempting the gods again, which angered guards Trevor Rees-Jones and Kes Wingfield, who had spent the entire day with the couple and had grown exasperated by Dodi’s constant changes in schedule. Wingfield, who did not get into the car that night, is said to be the most important witness at the inquest. Rees-Jones was the only one of the four people in the car to survive the crash. His face was severely injured, and he has no memory of the accident. As of this moment he has not taken the stand. He has also dropped the Jones from his hyphenated last name, presumably because Rees is less recognizable than Rees-Jones.

From Paris I took the train to London, riding through the French countryside and then through another tunnel, this one under the English Channel. I checked into Claridge’s and arrived in Courtroom No. 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice the next morning for the inquest. It’s called a “Coroner’s Inquest” and is really just the continuation of the British government’s attempt to establish the facts surrounding the deaths of Diana and Dodi. British law requires a Coroner’s Inquest whenever a British citizen dies abroad from anything other than natural causes. The reason this one has taken so long is that the British coroner first had to wait for the French to complete their own investigation, which formally ended in 2002, and then for the British police to conduct an investigation, which concluded in January of 2007. (Both the French and the British police concluded the crash was an accident.) Initially the inquest was going to open without a jury, but Al Fayed, along with the family of Henri Paul, sued to hold the case before a jury, and won. A jury was sworn in on October 2, 2007, and the inquest finally began. The 11-person jury has no alternates. They could lose as many as four of the jurors during the inquest, and the remaining seven could still arrive at a verdict. As Lord Justice Scott Baker announced to those of us assembled in Courtroom No. 73, “This is an investigation and not a criminal trial.”

There are a few things I should mention about my personal but remote connections to the Princess Diana inquest. Two nights before I had flown to Paris, I gave a little dinner at Swifty’s on the eve of an English wedding in New York. I was a friend of the groom and the groom’s parents, but I did not know any of the other English guests. I found it an extraordinary coincidence that Lady Jane Fellowes, Princess Diana’s sister, should be among them. Her husband, Lord Robert Fellowes, who was the private secretary to the Queen at the time of Diana’s divorce from Prince Charles, was also at my table. At first I didn’t know if I should tell her that I was going to the inquest in Paris two days later, but I decided it would be wrong not to. She was lovely. She didn’t stiffen up and get distant. She knew what I did for a living. She waved her husband over to tell him. She said, “You know, we’ve made up our minds that these investigations and events will be with us all our lives.”

Lady Jane has not appeared in court, but Diana’s other sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, who is an executor of Diana’s will, is often in attendance. Diana’s sons, William and Harry, and her sisters and brother Charles, the ninth Earl Spencer, who shocked the royal family with his fierce eulogy in Westminster Abbey, in which he said his sister was “the most hunted person of the modern age,” dread the inquest. Predictions are that it will last for six months and that as many as 70 witnesses will be called. The cost to the British government has been estimated to be 10 million pounds, with 3 million alone spent on security for the jury.

Diana’s family will read about their mother and sister every day for six months and see photographs of her dying that have never been shown before. The pictures of the wreck are harrowing. Dodi fell over Diana when the Mercedes crashed. The first people to arrive saw only the three men, two dead and one critically injured. When they looked closer, they saw Diana. A French doctor who treated her at the scene didn’t know until the next morning that she was the Princess of Wales. Possibly because Dodi’s body shielded her, her beautiful face was unmarked by injury. At the inquest another doctor who had treated her at the crash site said she had still been alive when he arrived. He also said that she fought off medics and tore out an intravenous drip. She was thrashing about and had to be sedated before being removed from the car. The French approach to treating victims of multiple injuries is to stabilize them at the scene. The British approach is to get the injured into an ambulance and to the hospital as quickly as possible. A British doctor said at the inquest that she might have been saved if she had gotten to the hospital sooner.

I once had a meeting with Diana. It was during the O. J. Simpson trial. On a three-day weekend, I flew from Los Angeles to London and met with her about a possible future project, which never happened. She had liked an article I had written about Queen Noor of Jordan for this magazine and another on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis after her death. She came into the room smiling. She put out her hand, saying, “Don’t tell me they’ve let you out of that courtroom,” graciously acknowledging who I was without my having to tell her. She was friendly, teasing, and accessible in a way that members of the royal family rarely are. She had been watching the Simpson trial on Sky Television. About O.J., she said, “He’s going to be acquitted.” I said, “Oh, no, ma’am. That won’t happen.” “You wait,” she said. By the end of our encounter, I had practically fallen in love with her.

I knew Dodi Al Fayed too. He was an acquaintance of mine in Hollywood. He was one of the producers of the Academy Award–winning film Chariots of Fire and he was taken up by the community. He went to all the parties. He loved the pretty actresses. He used to get an allowance of $100,000 a month from his father, but was always broke at the end of the month. I’ve ridden in a car with him when he yelled “Faster, faster” to the driver, as have several people I know from that period. I was doing a piece for this magazine on Adnan Khashoggi, the international arms dealer then known as the richest man in the world, who at the time was in prison in Bern, Switzerland. Mohamed Al Fayed’s first wife was Khashoggi’s sister. When he divorced her, bitterness and hate grew between the two men. That was when Dodi introduced me to his father, and I got an earful. Another time, when I went broke out in Hollywood, Dodi did a very kind thing that I’ll always remember. I had to sell everything I owned, and I owned some pretty good stuff. Dodi bought a lot of it at top price to give to an actress he was staying with at the time to furnish her apartment, but I knew he did it to help me out.

He was a good guy. He was fun. But I don’t think Princess Diana was ever going to marry him. He was just what she needed at that moment in her life. She was quoted as saying to her friend Rosa Monckton that she needed another marriage like she needed “a bad rash on my face.” One of the stories making the rounds at London dinner parties is that Mohamed Al Fayed himself wanted to marry Princess Diana at one time, in the same manner that Aristotle Onassis had married Jacqueline Kennedy—each man wanting to acquire the most famous woman in the world. “Oh, no,” said a fashionable lady with a title. “It’s not the same thing at all. Ari was such fun. He danced on tables. He created excitement. Mohamed is not like that at all.”

The other story that was brought up at every table I dined at in London was the blackmail case involving a minor male member of the royal family. The last known blackmail case involving a royal took place in 1891, and ensnared the Duke of Clarence, a son of Edward VII, who had paid off a prostitute for the return of some indiscreet letters he had written that might have become public. In the current case, the alleged blackmailers, who are now in jail, demanded money after threatening to release a cell-phone video purporting to show the royal engaged in a sexual act with a male aide. The video also allegedly showed the aide snorting cocaine given to him in an envelope bearing a royal insignia. The royal went to Scotland Yard, for which I admire him, and said that he was being blackmailed. A sting operation was set up in a suite in the Hilton hotel in Mayfair. When money was mentioned, the cops moved in and arrested the two. A court order forbids the British media to reveal the names of victims in a blackmail case. For a day there was much guessing as to who the minor royal might be. There were several possibilities, married and unmarried, under discussion. Then the name came out on the Internet and in the Australian papers in a graphic, detailed report. He is not at all one of the two who were suspected. He is a minor royal in that he performs no official functions, but go back a generation and he’s as royal as you can get. It was an enormous surprise to all. There are a wife and children. He is sitting it out in the Middle East.

A safe place to talk, with no possibility of being overheard, is at the corner table to the left in a public room called the Library at Claridge’s. One of the great beauties of London had lunch with me there and told me that she had had a romance years ago with the minor royal. “Believe me, I can tell you for a fact this man is not gay,” she said. She didn’t go into details, but she was very certain. There is a possibility that the minor royal will have to take the witness-box when the case goes to court. I’d like to cover that trial.

During a lunch break at the inquest, I made off to St. Bride’s Church, on Fleet Street, a beautiful 17th-century church designed by Sir Christopher Wren, for the memorial service for Nigel Dempster, arguably the most famous social and gossip columnist of the last 25 years. He was as much a celebrity as most of the people he wrote about. He was funny, gregarious, stylish, and married to a duke’s daughter. For some reason, I had a splendid seat up with the swells. The choir was blissful, and then, in the midst of the liturgical music, hymns, and anthems, they began to sing “Anything Goes,” by Cole Porter, their voices ringing to the belfry. It was perfect. Dempster’s daughter, Louisa, read a passage from The Great Gatsby. At the end, as we were leaving, after the “Hallelujah” chorus, the choir went back to Cole Porter and sang “Well, Did You Evah? (What a Swell Party This Is),” best known from the film High Society. Then, curiously, the music changed again and ended with the theme music from Chariots of Fire, the film Dodi had produced. No connection.

I skipped the reception and went back to court for the afternoon session. Michael Cole, the elegant gentleman who is Mohamed Al Fayed’s tireless public-relations executive, said to me, “Well, you certainly had a good seat at Nigel’s memorial service.” I hadn’t seen him there. Michael Cole is probably the closest person to Al Fayed. “Four photographic agencies in Paris were robbed on the night of the crash and hundreds and hundreds of paparazzi pictures were stolen and have never been found,” he said to me one day, talking about the conspiracy, which is a constant in his conversation.

As I sat in Courtroom No. 73 listening to the details of Diana’s death, the beloved Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and his wife, Heather Mills, sat in an adjacent courtroom sorting out one of the most acrimonious divorces in memory. Try though I have, I cannot bring myself to feel one bit of sympathy for Heather Mills. She’s in the London papers and on television every day. Somebody ought to tell this lady to Shut Up, the way the King of Spain recently told off Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela. But Heather’s lawyers, at the prestigious firm of Mishcon de Reya—which has represented such well-known people in the past as Princess Diana in her divorce from Prince Charles, and the billionairess Lily Safra in her suit to halt sales and pulp all copies of a novel rumored to be about her life—have parted ways with their client. I found it astounding that alimony figures in the neighborhood of £50 million for a four-year, unhappy marriage were under discussion.

Heather’s biggest asset has always been her handicap. As the world knows, she has only one leg. The other was lost after she was hit by a police motorcycle while crossing the road. She has a perfectly functioning prosthetic leg. During her marriage, which Paul’s daughter Stella McCartney, the very successful clothing designer, had fiercely opposed, Heather dropped Diana’s name on the Larry King show one night. When King asked her if she liked being called “the new Diana,” Heather clarified that Diana had joined her in the campaign against land mines, not the other way around. It smacked of self-importance. In that same interview, she took off her leg and handed it to Larry. One of the great moments in television history was the look on Larry’s face when he didn’t know what to do with Heather’s leg. Recently, since the split-up and the unfortunate television interviews in which she says she’s suicidal and has received death threats and sometimes fears for her life, she has also insinuated that she knows something damaging about Paul’s personal life, which she may or may not reveal. She has also turned up on the television show Dancing with the Stars, tripping the light fantastic, dancing beautifully in a lovely evening dress that was not designed by Stella McCartney. When she arrived at court for her divorce and custody hearing, however, she came with a wheelchair.

One of the most persistent rumors about Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed’s crash is that the Mercedes was hit by a white Fiat Uno owned by the famous paparazzo James Andanson, who would die in May 2000 under mysterious circumstances. There was indeed a white Fiat that had glancingly collided outside the Alma tunnel with the black Mercedes, leaving white paint on the Mercedes door. The car quickly disappeared without stopping. Two witnesses at the inquest identified a second-generation Vietnamese immigrant, Le Van Thanh, as the driver of the Fiat. Thanh was interviewed by French authorities two months after the crash, but they ruled him out, despite the fact he had spray-painted his Fiat red after the crash. British authorities disagreed with the French, but Thanh has refused to testify at the inquest.

Another major setback is that the French paparazzi, who many think caused the accident, have also refused to testify, even though they would be able to do it from Paris via closed circuit to the courtroom in London. This prompted the Daily Express to print the headline diana inquest: it’s a farce, which had to have been bleak news for the Al Fayed camp. The French government is not going to force the paparazzi to take the witness stand. Al Fayed and Mansfield have called on Jack Straw, Britain’s justice secretary, to intervene personally with his French counterpart, but little progress is being made. Without the participation of the paparazzi, the inquest will never provide a complete picture of what happened in the Alma tunnel. Perhaps the point is that there never will be a complete picture. Princess Diana will remain one of those legends in heaven—like that other inconvenient woman, Marilyn Monroe, about whom books and operas will be written for decades to come. There will always be those who believe that Diana was murdered at the behest of the royal family in much the same way that some people will always think that Marilyn Monroe was taken care of at the behest of powerful people. “Rest in peace” doesn’t seem to apply to Princess Diana.

[sunny]

Thanks for posting the VF article nomo. That little gadfly Dunne sure knows how to dish the juicy gossip, doesn't he? Too bad he's such a suck up to "power and privilege".

[antiaristo]

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Only for a few days





ADDED ON EDIT

That strip will disappear in a few days so I'll post this here.

Finally we get to the Henri Paul blood samples.
You'll recall that this has been about a drunk driver since 1 September 1997. Today we found out how that happened. Here is how the day ended:

3 Q. In fact there was a further revelation from Dr Shepherd
4 on 14th January 2008, was there not --
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. -- because Dr Shepherd was eventually provided with what
7 were alleged to be photographs of the post-mortem
8 examination of the late Henri Paul?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. When he examined those photographs carefully and
11 critically, he identified the fact that before
12 Henri Paul was cut open on the chest to reveal the
13 haemothorax, there was a photograph of him lying on his
14 face.
15 A. Yes. Yes, I have seen that.
16 Q. In that photograph it was possible to identify two glass
17 bottles of what appeared to be blood --
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. -- which could not have been scooped from the
20 haemothorax, as Professor Lecomte suggested all the
21 samples were.
22 A. Because the chest had not been opened at that point.
23 Q. Exactly so. Now various suppositions have been advanced
24 as to the provenance of those two glass containers
25 containing what appears to be blood.

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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. One is the idea that the blood was taken from the neck.
3 A. Yes. It is difficult to know why one would do that, but
4 it's a possibility.
5 Q. One is that it might have been removed from the body
6 using a syringe.
7 A. Yes. You can get samples at post mortem by external
8 puncture. As I have already intimated, it's not
9 uncommon, I was told, in France, for that to be done.
10 It also happens in the United States. Not every road
11 traffic victim in jurisdictions outside England and
12 Wales -- I should say fatal road traffic victims in
13 jurisdictions outside of England, Wales and Scotland --
14 automatically gets a post-mortem examination.
15 In some circumstances the toxicology is based on
16 external puncture, trying to get blood from often the
17 heart, maybe from the femoral artery, and the literature
18 has a number of references, both in conferences and in
19 papers, to the problems that can arise when you do this.
20 Q. One further possibility is that the two containers were
21 there from a previous autopsy.
22 A. Yes, agreed.
23 Q. But the point really is this, Professor: whichever
24 supposition you seek to adopt, and we could perhaps try
25 and generate others, what this illustrates, if nothing

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1 else, is that unless those two blood samples belonged to
2 a different body --
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. -- Professor Lecomte did not give a true and accurate
5 account of the post mortem on 31st August, did she?
6 A. Agreed, and I understand that some of the photographs
7 show a collection of, I think, eight empty bottles -- or
8 is it seven bottles -- and then we get two which have
9 been filled with blood at a later stage before the body
10 is turned over. That, to me, suggests that unless there
11 is another body in the autopsy suite or those bottles
12 have been brought in, that that blood has come from
13 an inappropriate and undocumented site from M Paul's
14 body, but I accept that one certainly cannot be sure of
15 that on the basis of what you have said to me.
16 Q. If we ever actually want to know what was going on in
17 IML on 31st August 1997, we are going to have to find
18 out from Professor Lecomte what she was really doing on
19 that occasion, aren't we?
20 A. Or other people who were there who would be prepared to
21 give an account under oath.
22 Q. The other person who was there was Commander Mules?
23 A. Yes. There would presumably have been some technicians
24 present. Professor Lecomte describes doing the
25 procedure with technical assistance. I understand

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1 from -- I believe I have read in the papers that one of
2 the technicians has died, at least one has died since,
3 so it clearly is not available to the court.
4 Q. I think the great misfortune is that the technician who
5 is supposed to have labelled the bottles is now
6 deceased.
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Putting that aside, are you also aware that
9 Commander Mules, who was present at the autopsy, when
10 asked about his contemporaneous record, said that he had
11 made notes but had since destroyed them?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Have you ever encountered that before, Professor, that
14 you have a police officer present for such an autopsy,
15 that he takes contemporaneous notes, and then, in the
16 context of an inquiry, destroys them?
17 A. I have, but the officer has then been severely
18 criticised.
19 Q. That's hardly a surprise, is it?
20 A. Well, absolutely not. As I said, when I was first
21 assisting the Coroner, what every young doctor is told
22 is that, whether it's about clinical -- and certainly if
23 there is going to be a forensic interest in the case,
24 there is absolutely no substitute for a note that you
25 make, date, time and sign as soon as possible after the

170

1 incident has taken place. That goes into the notes, and
2 if you make any subsequent alteration to the notes, you
3 date, time and initial it and you make sure that the
4 original note that you have made is still legible.
5 Q. That's what the chain of custody is all about, isn't it?
6 A. Well, that's more documentation of an adverse clinical
7 event or indeed any clinical event when -- if you want
8 to look at case notes in a clinical context, when you
9 see a nicely handwritten note where those criteria are
10 being complied with, your heart lifts.
11 Q. Or, as in this case, it falls.
12 A. It sinks.
13 Q. Because even as we step into the realms of speculation,
14 we have Professor Lecomte giving an account of events
15 which on the face of it cannot be true?
16 A. Sir, you are pushing at an open door. There are clear
17 inconsistencies in Professor Lecomte's account which it
18 would be very useful to have explained.
19 Q. We have a Commander Mules, who is there, present, taking
20 contemporaneous notes, but which he has since destroyed.
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Regrettably we have a laboratory assistant who is
23 attributed with the task of having placed labels on
24 bottles, but is now deceased.
25 A. Yes. There is an issue about bottle labelling and the

171

1 best --
2 Q. We are going to deal with that in some detail,
3 Professor, but I agree.
4 A. The point I was going to make is that ideally you should
5 put the label on after you have taken the blood samples,
6 not before, for very obvious reasons.
7 Q. Were you aware that in this case, because the person who
8 put the labels on didn't work at weekends, all samples
9 for the weekend were put together in what appears to
10 have been an ice-cream box and left for him to be
11 labelled on the Monday?
12 A. I wasn't.
13 Q. I think we have a photograph of the ice-cream box.
14 I assume it's an ice-cream box, but it may be some
15 technical receptacle that I am not familiar with, with
16 the word "Walls" on it. That is hardly consistent with
17 what you would expect in a post-mortem examination in
18 the United Kingdom, is it?
19 A. I think the mildest way to describe it is it's not
20 consistent with best practice.
21 Q. It's hardly consistent with second-best practice, is it,
22 Professor?
23 A. It is not at all consistent with good practice. If
24 a laboratory was being accredited in the United Kingdom
25 or a mortuary was being accredited in the United Kingdom

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1 by the organisation that accredits, National Health
2 Service and other laboratories, including mortuary
3 practice, if that sort of thing was seen to be going on,
4 I doubt very much whether or not they would be
5 accredited.
6 Q. Could we look for a moment at (x) in Dr Shepherd's
7 report?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. I think he says there:
10 "There appears to be a general lack of clarity about
11 sampling, labelling and documentation of the samples
12 taken on 31st August 1997. Professor Lecomte stated
13 that 'exhibiting is not an issue for the medical
14 examiner'. However, Major Mules records that it should
15 have been his job to seal the exhibits, but
16 Professor Lecomte didn't follow this protocol and
17 insisted on overall control herself."
18 A. Yes. I think there are a number of issues about that.
19 Sealing is, as I have mentioned, actually using a wax
20 seal with sealing wax in many cases.
21 Secondly, in the United Kingdom and certainly in
22 England and Wales, in a forensic post-mortem
23 examination, there will usually be a police scene of
24 crimes officer present and the pathologist will be
25 gowned up and the pathologist will pass the samples

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1 perhaps to a mortuary technician or directly to the
2 scene of crimes officer, who will then document it with
3 the yellow labels or writing on the tamper-evident bags,
4 which the court may be familiar with.
5 Of course Dr Shepherd and Professor Vanezis could go
6 into that in more detail than I can. I have never done
7 it myself. I have been present on many occasions in
8 mortuaries when a forensic post mortem has been carried
9 out where that sort of thing has been done. That
10 protocol or a very similar protocol has been adopted.
11 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Keen, when you reach
12 a convenient moment, we will have to break off for the
13 day.
14 MR KEEN: I am obliged, sir.
15 Just to try and round this up a little, Professor,
16 would it be fair to say that you would not want to be
17 tried for murder on the basis of Professor Lecomte's
18 evidence from this post-mortem?
19 A. I would not want to be tried for murder at all.
20 Q. That's a wise comment, Professor.
21 A. I would refrain from the comment that if I was, I would
22 be quite happy to be defended by you.
23 I agree with the sentiment that you have expressed.
24 MR KEEN: Thank you, Professor.
25 No further questions, sir, at this point.

http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/h ... 0108pm.htm


HENRI PAUL WAS CLEARLY FRAMED.

Anybody disagre?

[winston smith]

The night I arrived in Paris I ran into some English friends, and we all went into the Ritz Bar quite late. One of them said, “Oh, let me introduce you to the guy who served Henri Paul the drinks before he drove the Mercedes with Diana and Dodi.” Ten years have gone by and people talk about the accident casually. There are no longer hushed tones.

is this person being called as a witness?

[antiaristo]

is this person being called as a witness?

winston,
Nah, he's just a gossip columnist.


Tho' this part IS interesting:

The last known blackmail case involving a royal took place in 1891, and ensnared the Duke of Clarence, a son of Edward VII, who had paid off a prostitute for the return of some indiscreet letters he had written that might have become public.

Hmmm.
Duke of Clarence. Indiscreet letters. Prostitutes.

Remember what had happened in 1888, three years before?
Remember the Whitechapel Murders?
Remember "Jack the Ripper"?

Five or six prostitutes murdered, one of whom JUST HAPPENED to be the mistress of the Duke of Clarence.

The archetype "serial killer" who remains a mystery to this day. Almost as though the powers that be specifically want it that way.

That was Queen Victoria. Acting under the auspices of the Treason Felony Act.

Then Queens Alexandra and Mary covered for Queen Victoria (1901 to 1952)

Then Queen Elizabeth covered for Queen Mary (1952 to 2002)

Then Queen Elizabeth covered for Queen Elizabeth (the mother) until the present day...

"There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge."

This is the latest installment:

Queen 'had her mother's will sealed in secret'

By Christopher Hope, Legal Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 7:45pm GMT 21/01/2008

Britain's most senior law officer and highest ranking family judge secretly agreed with lawyers for the Queen to seal the wills of Princess Margaret and late Queen Elizabeth after their deaths in 2002, the Appeal Court has heard.

The presence of the secret pact only became known because of a legal challenge by Robert Brown, who claims to be the illegitimate son of Princess Margaret and her one-time lover Group Captain Peter Townsend. He has been fighting for over two years to have her will unsealed.

The Appeal Court heard that lawyers for the Queen won a "practice direction" that enshrined the ban in law shortly after the deaths of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret - the first major deaths in the Royal Family since the death of George VI.

The secret deal, which was kept from Parliament and the public, codified in law for the first time a longstanding convention that royal wills are kept secret.

Until then royal wills were kept secret because of a precedent established in 1911, when Queen Mary applied to have the will of her younger brother, Prince Francis of Teck, sealed to stop the public finding out he had left jewellery to a mistress.

According to a transcript of a hearing last month, lawyers for Buckingham Palace, solicitors for the Treasury and the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith conducted a secret review of the rules governing the publication of royal wills "before and after the death of the Queen Mother" in 2002.

The talks resulted in plans to formalise the sealing of the future royal wills. Over the following months the direction was agreed away from the public gaze, in a lower court, before being put to Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the then-president of the Family Division who approved the procedure.

The procedure was so secret, the Appeal Court heard, that it was unknown to Dame Elizabeth's successor Sir Mark Potter, who last summer threw out Mr Brown's attempt to see the will of Princess Margaret.

In the Appeal Court Geoffrey Robertson QC, for Mr Brown, claimed his client's human rights as a member of the public to see her outweighed any right to privacy claimed by the Royal family.

Mr Robertson said the case "raised important and novel issues never raised before."

The 52-year-old accountant from Jersey was challenging the claim that "the privacy interests of the Royal family outweigh any public interest in unsealing royal wills," he said.

Mr Hinks said the executors of the royal wills were opposing the application because Mr Brown had no right to see them. "It is a fraudulent claim. It is a scandalous claim that he is the son of the sister of the sovereign without any factual basis," he said.

http://tinyurl.com/ypkh5f (Daily Telegraph)


Dame Butler-Sloss. Where have I heard that name?

Lord Goldsmith. Where have I heard that name?

"practice direction" - what does that mean, and how does it carry the force of law?

What is a law that is kept secret from Parliament? (And aren't we always told that Parliament is sovereign? Not so, apparently. Only when it suits the Crown.)

So secret, in fact, that even the judges do not know about it.

Does anyone here detect the whiff of Freemasonry in this case?

Can everybody really not see how this works? How each queen protects her predecessor?

Can people really not see how Queen Camilla will in turn protect the memory and reputation of the current queen.

And how this all ties into the TWO notes in which Diana stated that she would be done in to allow Charles to re-marry? If he could not re-marry, there would be no replacement queen, would there?

The last will and testament of the Queen Mother (the powers at work) is being kept secret for reasons already expounded on this very thread. For more detailed explanations, see here:

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... 432#111432

[sunny]

anti, have they brought up the suicide victim whose blood many suspect was substituted for Paul's? Have they brought up the fact that DNA testing has not been allowed on the sample? Can this court direct such testing to be done, and do you think it will?

[antiaristo]

sunny,
I've just downloaded this morning's transcript where they are dealing with identification. I've not read it yet.

Have a look

http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/h ... 0108am.htm

As for the court directing anything, I think we will be told it is a matter for the French, and that the Coroner has no powers to compel anything.

[winston smith]

sorry. Just to be clear, this gossip columnist Dunne appears to be suggesting in his article that he is introduced to a man who served Henri Paul alcoholic drinks.

is this just nonsense/gossip/exaggeration or is there actually a person who claims to have served Henri Paul the necessary quantities of alcohol before he got in the car?

[winston smith]

Ok. I heard on the radio that there is a known barman who served him a couple of ricards but presumably that does not tally with the blood alcohol level at death.

The night I arrived in Paris I ran into some English friends, and we all went into the Ritz Bar quite late. One of them said, “Oh, let me introduce you to the guy who served Henri Paul the drinks before he drove the Mercedes with Diana and Dodi.” Ten years have gone by and people talk about the accident casually. There are no longer hushed tones.

Maybe its just me that finds Dunne saying "the drinks" misleading. Perhaps that ties in to my borderline aspergers score on another thread!

[antiaristo]

.


They're out to make sure that NOTHING like this happens EVER AGAIN

Fears over jury ban in 'secrecy' inquests
Last Updated: 1:53am GMT 04/02/2008

A dispute has broken out over government plans to remove juries from some inquests.

Provisions buried in last month's Counter-Terrorism Bill would also allow home secretaries to replace coroners with their own officers.

The measures are designed to avoid sensitive details of secret service activities, phone-taps and surveillance operations falling into the hands of laymen sitting on juries.

Critics warned against "dangerous" tinkering with a centuries-old system.

Pete Weatherby, a barrister, said many coroners were alarmed at the proposals, which he believes could breach the European Convention on Human Rights requirement for judicial investigations to be independent of government.

Alan Beith, the Liberal Democrat chairman of the Commons justice committee, said a politician should not decide there would not be a jury in a particular inquest.

Bridget Prentice, the justice minister, said the changes would be used sparingly.

"They are necessary to ensure that we can comply with our obligations to carry out an investigation, while protecting the integrity of the material in question.

"Virtually all inquests will continue to be held in public and, apart from these exceptional circumstances, juries will be summoned in the circumstances they are at present."

http://tinyurl.com/35qx36
(Daily Telegraph)


They did something similar with official inquiries in 2005, placing the process under the control of a government minister.

The jury is the heart of the common law system. You must be found guilty by a group of your peers. Of course that will still be the case in Scotland, where they have a parliament to defend basic liberties.

What a foul disgusting place is modern England.

Next week is Richard Tomlinson, ex MI6.
Something of a swan-song for the spooks.

[antiaristo]

.


I've a nagging suspicion that Queen Elizabeth had to get this inquest over and done with BEFORE what follows becomes public.

Queen Elizabeth, Lord Goldsmith and Baroness Butler-Sloss, between them, broke the law by means of the Treason Felony Act.

That fact is slowly, begrudgingly, being conceded.

But it has been dragged out for just long enough to get them past the inquest, and the verdict of the jury.

Just to be clear. The Queen warned Paul Burrell and told him of "powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge". We have that on oath.

The person behind those powers was Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, exercising the provisions of the Treason Felony Act.

That's why this matters.

Court ruling threatens secrecy of royal wills
By Christopher Hope, Legal Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 3:23pm GMT 08/02/2008

The Royal Family's right to keep their wills secret could be overturned after a court victory for a man who claims he is the illegitimate son of the late Princess Margaret.

Jersey accountant Robert Brown, 53, believes he could be the love child of Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend - who had an ill-fated romance with the Princess - making him 12th in line to the throne.

His two-year quest to find out the contents of the wills of Princess Margaret and her mother were blocked by the family court, which ruled that the orders to seal the documents should remain in force.

However, today Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice, and two other appeal judges said Mr Brown was entitled to a hearing of his claim to inspect the wills.

If the court rules in Mr Brown's favour it would overturn the century-long legal convention which has ensured that any wills of members of the Royal Family cannot be inspected by the public.

The judges also said today that the family court should examine whether a secret direction, which enshrined the convention in law after the deaths of Princess Margaret and her mother Queen Elizabeth in 2002, was "appropriate".

Mr Brown's belief that he was the illegitimate son of the late Princess "is without any foundation and is irrational", Lord Phillips said, adding: "It is, however, held in good faith."

Lord Phillips said: "It is unfortunate that the important issues to which we have drawn attention should be raised by an application made by a person motivated by a belief that is both irrational and scandalous.

"We have, however, concluded that the appellant was and is entitled to have a substantive hearing of his claim to inspect the wills. For these reasons the appeal is allowed."

When Mr Brown's initial application was turned down last July, Sir Mark Potter, president of the family division of the High Court, said it "should be struck out as vexatious and an abuse of process, made as it is solely for the purpose of seeking to establish an imaginary and baseless claim".

However, it emerged in the Appeal Court in December that Sir Mark had not been aware of a secret legal direction agreed by his predecessor, Dame Elizabeth Butler, the then-Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and lawyers for the Royal Family to seal the wills in 2002.

Mr Brown will now have his day in court later this spring.

Speaking after the ruling, Mr Brown said: "I am delighted we have won this case. It is a victory for openness and justice. I continue to seek the truth."

Mr Brown's solicitor Amber Melville-Brown said there was a "statutory presumption in favour of the openness of wills in the UK and a constitutional principle of open justice".

She added: "Yet there is nothing open about these wills, whether it's what's in them, why they were closed and under what procedure this was done. They are quite simply shrouded in mystery.

"Robert Brown's success on this appeal means that the court will be asked to consider whether it is desirable and appropriate in this day and age that mystery should give way to transparency and that conventions that belong in the dark ages should be brought into the light."

The convention of sealing royal wills has its origins in 1911, when Queen Mary's brother, Prince William of Teck, allegedly left part of the crown jewels - known as "the Cambridge emeralds" - to his mistress in his will.

Queen Mary prevailed upon the then attorney general and the president of the family division of the High Court to "seal up" her brother's will in order to "hush up this royal scandal in her coronation year" .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... lls308.xml

There you go.
Sir Mark Potter "didn't know" about the secret deal when he literally said to Mr Brown

Fuck Off!

Or in courtly English

"vexatious and an abuse of process, made as it is solely for the purpose of seeking to establish an imaginary and baseless claim"

All an(other) honest mistake.

Fortunately,

"Mr Brown will now have his day in court later this spring."

How convenient!

Queen Mary prevailed upon the then attorney general and the president of the family division of the High Court to "seal up" her brother's will in order to "hush up this royal scandal in her coronation year"

Yup.
Using that same Treason Felony Act.



ADDED ON EDIT


The reason I'm harping on this is that the British system cannot deal with a crime committed by the Head of State. The law acts in her name. Just as in the US a prosecution is conducted in the name of "The People vs....", in the UK it is conducted in her name - "R vs...".

So it goes into formal denial. In order to avoid the absurdity of "R vs R".

She is, formally, the "Fount of all Honour and Justice".

By formally I mean it is legally mandated. It's the law of the land.

So that honour and justice become perverted and corrupted, in order to deny the fact. Honour and justice become handmaidens to crime. And that is why so much in the world is now upside-down, or back to front, or the wrong way round, or however you like to put it.

That's why it IS a big deal when the Sovereign is revealed in her true colours, contemptuous of legal and constitutional constraints.

So a bit more from The Guardian, which fills in gaps in the Telegraph piece.

Note the familiar cast of characters:

Tony Blair
Lord Goldsmith
Baroness Butler-Sloss
Norman Baker MP (Dr David Kelly book)
Geoffrey Robertson QC

All fluttering around the Queen Mother's will.

Wonder why?

Accountant lifts veil from royal wills


Duncan Campbell
Saturday February 9, 2008
The Guardian

A 53-year-old Jersey accountant who believes he may be the son of Princess Margaret and 12th in line to the throne yesterday won a landmark ruling which opens the door for the inspection of the wills of members of the royal family, ending nearly a century of secrecy.

The ruling by the court of appeal was welcomed by campaigners for greater transparency about royal affairs. It emerged during the hearings that Princess Margaret, who died in 2002, left an estate worth nearly £8m.

The case results from the quest of Robert Brown to discover whether he is the son of the late princess and the late Group Captain Peter Townsend. His claim was described by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips in the court of appeal yesterday as "scandalous and irrational". However, it was accepted he had a right to challenge the secret decision, described in court as "unlawful and unconstitutional", made by Lord Goldsmith and Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss to seal for ever the wills of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.

"This is a very positive judgment," said the Lib Dem MP Norman Baker, who first raised the issue in the House of Commons in 2006. "It is a long established principle of British justice that wills are subject to inspection and there is no reason why the royal family should be treated any differently. There must be a suspicion that the reason that the royal family has been so determined to keep the wills secret is that, if the public realised how much money is being passed from generation to generation, they might question how much is being handed to them from the public purse."

Brown said: "I am delighted we have won this case. It is a victory for openness and justice. I continue to seek the truth."

His solicitor, Amber Melville-Brown, said the case established an important right. She added: "Conventions that belong in the dark ages should be brought into the light."

The current arrangement, whereby the wills were kept secret, was the result of a clandestine ruling by the then president of the family division, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, following top-secret representations from the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, and the royal solicitors, Farrer's.

The arrangement to seal the wills was made when Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother were ill in 2002 and shortly before they died. It emerged during the hearing that the gross value of the princess's estate was £7,700,176 and the net value £7,603,596.

It was ordered that the value of the Queen Mother's estate should never be revealed. Farrer's had no comment on the judgment or how much inheritance tax, if any, was paid.

Brown, born in Kenya, has been seeking to have access to Princess Margaret's will since 2006 but found his path blocked.

Representing Brown, Geoffrey Robertson QC told the hearing: "This appeal raises important questions as to the circumstances in which wills, in particular those of members of the royal family, can be sealed and hidden from public inspection and the circumstances in which wills which have been sealed can be unsealed."

He argued in his submission: "It is difficult to see why the royal family should need such 'protection' since it is not vouchsafed to any other family ... It is of obvious public importance to ensure that those who are given charge of national assets should not mix them up with disposable personal property."

Robertson said in court that the way the decision to seal the wills was taken was "unconstitutional, quite plainly unlawful".

He suggested that the then prime minister, Tony Blair, had misled the House of Commons when he told it that the sealing of the wills was a "long-standing convention" because constitutional conventions had to conform to the law.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/stor ... 02,00.html

[Pele'sDaughter]

The photographer accused of helping MI6 to murder Princess Diana was found in a burnt-out BMW with a hole in his head, a court heard today.

James Andanson died after boasting to friends of having secretly taken "explosive" photos of the Paris crash scene, the Diana inquest was told.

The Frenchman owned a white Fiat Uno, which Mohamed Al Fayed claims he used to cause the fatal collision that killed the princess and his son Dodi.

The Harrods boss believes the photographer was planning to go public with his "involvement" in the alleged British secret service plot when his charred body was found in a forest near his home in the South of France in May 2000.

French Investigating officer Jean-Michel Lauzun told the London hearing that he arrived while the vehicle was still ablaze and saw the corpse alight at the steering wheel with a two inch hole in his left temple.

But police concluded that it was a suicide after a pathologist said the hole was due to the intense heat of the fire after he set alight to himself.

High levels of carbon monoxide was also found in his blood, suggesting Andanson was alive inside the fireball long enough to inhale fumes, rather than being killed beforehand.

But Mr Al Fayed's barrister Michael Mansfield QC suggested he may have been attacked before the car was set on fire.

He said: "We just don't know whether it s a case of a man consigning himself to a bizarre and painful death or whether in fact some violence had been meted out to him first."

Four months after the August 1997 crash, Andanson had bragged to friends that he had trailed Diana's Mercedes into the Alma Tunnel where it smashed into a pillar.

Unlike other paparazzi in the chase, he claimed to have been too "cunning" to get rounded up by the police afterwards and escaped arrest.

His photos from the scene were kept hidden in a safe and would cause a furore when they were published, he insisted.

French police were later tipped off about Andanson's claims, but when they interviewed him he produced receipts to show that on the night of the crash he had been in Lignieres, 170 miles to the south of Paris.

And while he had owned a white Fiat Uno, tests showed that paint flecks on the Mercedes could not have come from it.

Mr Al Fayed claims Diana and Dodi were killed on the orders of Prince Philip because she was pregnant with his child and they were planning to marry.

http://tinyurl.com/2xe5xm

[antiaristo]

.


Richard Tomlinson is giving evidence tomorrow by videolink. He's the former MI6 officer that noted similarities between what happened at the Pont d'Alma in 1997 and a plan to assassinate Slobodan Milosevich.

I was running an unrelated search on Dominic Lawson when this came up. It's interesting background from the early days.

The publication of this deposition has had at least an echo in the British Press : yesterday, the British magazine EuroBusiness published the following text on page 31 of their magazine. EuroBusiness has no Internet Site, so we publish the complete text of the article.





Security services - Judge Herve Stephan, the Frenchman appointed by a Paris court to investigate the death of British Princess Diana has had depositions from a variety of people who used to work for British secret service organisation MI6. Among the most notable is Richard Tomlinson, the spy in the news for supposedly revealing the identities of 116 MI6 agents.



SPY in the news perplexes a French judge

British spy Richard Tomlinson says Princess Diana was being followed by MI6 agents for years before she was killed in a car crash in a Paris underpass in august 1997.



By Jane Tawbase in Paris

Richard Tomlinson's bizarre claims are enhanced by the fact that Princess Diana's driver that fatal night was Fayed employee Henri Paul, who, almost by coincidence, was almost certainly an MI6 informant.

The publication of a list of 116 British spies has brought the whole matter of Princess Diana's to the fore again. The French judge cannot ignore it even if he wanted to.

Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al Fayed, who owns the Ritz Hotel in Paris and Harrods store in London, is convinced his son and Princess Diana were under surveillance by MI6 at the time of the accident. He also, wildly thinks they were murdered, but few agree with him.

However his accusations may not be as wild as some people think they are. There were undoubtedly secret-service connections with the people surrounding the Princess. Her self-confessed best friend, the Hon Rosa Monckton's brother was a serving MI6 officer.

The presence of her brother on Tomlinson's list will cause his sister all sorts of bother. The Hon Anthony Monckton, the brother of Rosa, who is the wife of prominent British Sunday newspaper editor Dominic Lawson, is the most prominent figure on the list. Lawson himself has already been accused in the British Parliament and the British Sunday Business newspaper of being on an MI6 payroll, a charge he has vehemently denied.

A legitimate question is whether Rosa Monckton introduced her brother to the Princess and whether he was part of the MI6 operation. It is almost unthinkable that he was not.

And that brings Rosa's relationship with the Princess into question.

The Moncktons are a British "spy" family. Anthony and Rosa Monckton's grand-father worked for British King Edward VIII and kept a close eye on him on behalf of the security services.

It would indeed be ironic if history had repeated itself and Rosa Monckton performed the same role for MI6 on Princess Diana.

It may well be fanciful but there are questions that need answering. Rosa Monckton's friendship with the Princess was always a strange one.

MI6 has traditionally been loyal to the monarch, rather than to the government of the day, and has always sought to align itself with the sovereign first, rather than the government. The reason in simple. The British sovereign has many exemptions from the laws of the land, and the vestiges of the Royal Prerogative, the virtual right to do as she pleases, still cling to the Queen. This is just what MI6 likes, to be a little above and a little beyond the law.

MI6 commanders would have seen themselves as having a clear duty to the Queen to place surveillance on the Princess as soon as it became clear that her marriage to Charles was in trouble and that she had started having affairs.

But the next question follows from the first. Did MI6 ask Rosa Monckton to do the key job, of moving into the Princess's inner circle and becoming her confidante, just as her grand-father had become the confidante of Edward VIII ? It would have certainly made the job easier.

Monckton, a generation older, made an old friend for the often unhappy princess. A svelte sophisticate and a wealthy working woman, her first relationships and loyalties lay, almost from when she was born, with the Queen. She was a regular visitor to the Royal Household all her life and was, for that reason, more given to loyalty to the crown than to an unhappy and disruptive outsider, one who was seriously damaging the public image of the Royal Family.

Britain's strict libel laws prevent any more reporting of that subject, but if it was the case, it then strengthens Mohamed Al Fayed's assertion that Princess Diana was pregnant by his son and weakens Monckton's assertion that that was impossible because she was menstruating only a week before the accident.

The answers will never be known but the speculations and rumours will take a long time to die.

As for the man who started it all, Richard Tomlinson, is now based in Geneva. Tomlinson is angry about his treatment at he hands of MI6 and is motivated by revenge. But he is a sane, rational man, not the sort to irrationally fabricate a story.

Interestingly Tomlinson does not believe that MI6 had any hand of part in the princess's death. He says clearly and simply, that a number of MI6 informants were connected with the event because of the surveillance and if Judge Herve Stephan wanted to know more he should get the MI6 files. But Tomlinson also believes the British people should now be told the full, unvarnished truth about the MI6 surveillance of the Princess.

He seems determined to get that information out and indicates he has a lot more including material on the Monckton matter.

It is this sort of activity that has led Mohamed Al Fayed to believe that MI6 had a hand in his son's death. It almost certainly did not. But MI6 probably does know the truth behind what happened on that tragic night in Paris.

Site développé pour IE 4.0 ©InterComService 1997 All rights reserved
Dernière modification : 04 June 1999

http://www.inside-news.ch/eurobusiness.htm

[antiaristo]

.

Evidence from a former MI6 Officer, given under oath.




16 Questions from MR MANSFIELD
17 MR MANSFIELD: Good morning. My name is Michael Mansfield
18 and I represent Mohamed Al Fayed. I have a few
19 questions for you as well.
20 We do appreciate that this is a long time ago and
21 you have been asked a number of questions about events
22 that are well over ten years ago or more. In my case
23 I am going to ask you to look at documents which
24 normally would be put to a witness to refresh their
25 memory of what they remembered at the time or nearer

47

1 the time.
2 Firstly, in principle, would it be right that
3 material that you produced in the 1990s is more likely
4 to be accurate as a memory recollection than your memory
5 now as a general principle?
6 A. I think that is a fair and logical assumption, yes.
7 Q. We have heard the difficulties about memory now, so I am
8 going to, as it were, do it through documents that are
9 yours from the past, as it were, in order to make some
10 progress.
11 We know the dates that you have already indicated of
12 your employment with MI6 and when you left. I want to
13 deal with, without compromising anyone -- I am not going
14 to deal with names and, if possible, obviously, I do not
15 want to give away any state secrets through you or put
16 you to any difficulty or embarrassment; do you
17 understand?
18 A. I understand, yes.
19 Q. Just a little about yourself: when you were recruited to
20 MI6, as far as you were concerned, was this a career
21 prospect for you; in other words, something you really
22 wanted to commit yourself to and remain in?
23 A. Yes, to me it was a career for life. I was expecting to
24 spend the rest of my career in MI6 until retirement.
25 Q. We heard that you graduated from Cambridge. Were you in

48

1 fact put on some form of fast-track, as it were, within
2 MI6 in order to progress within it?
3 A. You could put it that way. There are two tiers of
4 entering into MI6, rather similar to two ways of
5 entering the military. You can enter as a soldier or as
6 an officer and it was the same in MI6; you could enter
7 as a clerical or more administrative level or you could
8 enter as an officer, which was my case.
9 Q. You entered as an officer.
10 Now you obviously had to have training somewhere
11 near the beginning of that career, is that right?
12 A. That is correct. There was a period of intensive
13 training from the start of my career with MI6.
14 Q. That training you have described in some detail in your
15 book, "The Big Breach", have you not?
16 A. That is correct, yes.
17 Q. Now I want to deal with it in principle: fundamentally,
18 what you were being trained to do -- and I suggest this
19 is perfectly obvious in one sense -- you were being
20 trained to operate under cover, were you not?
21 A. Principally we operated under cover, either under cover
22 as a businessman or under cover as a normal diplomat on
23 overseas missions, that is correct, yes.
24 Q. You were given practical tests of how under cover in
25 the United Kingdom you might pretend to be somebody

49

1 other than you are in order to obtain information; is
2 that right?
3 A. That is correct, yes.
4 Q. In other words, the description I used the other day to
5 another witness, effectively you were being authorised
6 to deceive people into providing you with material
7 information, is that right?
8 A. You could certainly put it in those terms, yes. It was
9 not put to us in those terms when we were training. We,
10 at the time, believed that we were doing it for a good
11 cause, but -- yes, I suppose, you could use that word,
12 exact word, yes.
13 Q. In other words, if it is considered to be in the
14 national interest, it was permissible to deceive?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Now during the time you had training, were you shown
17 various types of equipment? Please understand, I am not
18 going it to go through all of it. There is just one
19 thing I want to ask you about. Were you shown types of
20 equipment that was used by --
21 A. Yes, we had training with both the SAS and SBS.
22 We went to visit them in their headquarters.
23 We were shown various bits of equipment by them which
24 they used on operations. We were shown all sorts of
25 other equipment as well in other parts of -- that the

50

1 British Government use on various occasions. It was
2 a very educative, formative training course that we were
3 put through.
4 Q. Now MI6 or SIS, could it be described in this way in
5 terms of its general role? Part of it was the
6 acquisition and collation of information from a variety
7 of sources. That is one role. The other role was to
8 oversee objectives which might be carried out by others?
9 A. Yes, that is the case, yes. I can think of examples of
10 that, yes.
11 Q. I am not going to ask you to give examples, but in
12 relation to the tasks that might be carried out by
13 others, is that generally termed "the increment"?
14 A. Yes, okay -- obviously I do not want to say too much on
15 this subject, but I agree, yes.
16 Q. That covers -- it may cover more -- two of the
17 organisations you have already mentioned, the SAS,
18 Special Air Service -- is that right?
19 A. That is correct, yes.
20 Q. -- and SBS, Special Boat Service?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Because MI6 itself does not contain operatives with
23 the relevant skills to carry out particular practical
24 tasks abroad?
25 A. That is exactly the case, yes.

51

1 Q. The one item I do want to ask you about, and you have
2 been asked about it before, is the question -- not just
3 the question but also the item -- a strobe or
4 flashlight. Now, were you, during training, ever shown
5 such an item?
6 A. I believe that I was when I went to Poole, to a visit to
7 the SBS, and they had a number of special weapons which
8 they used such as -- as weapons that could be used in
9 water. For example, they had a number of specialist
10 breathing apparatus; all sorts of very interesting and
11 specialist equipment.
12 One piece of equipment there that I remember was
13 a very bright -- a piece of equipment that could give
14 a very bright flashing light. I was told at the time
15 that this was used for -- in the case of if they wished
16 to disorient, for example a helicopter pilot, on landing
17 for example. Because clearly at night or suchlike,
18 a helicopter pilot might have been landing with night
19 vision goggles or even, at night, just using the naked
20 eye and a very, very bright flashing light would lead to
21 disorientation and being unable even to see outside
22 references and to likely being unable to control
23 the helicopter.
24 Q. Now, I am going to ask you this in the light of some
25 information which we have been provided with at this

52

1 end. Can you describe -- and I know it is a long time
2 ago and I am sorry to ask. If at any stage it is too
3 difficult, please say -- but can you describe the light
4 in any way at all that you saw in your training, which
5 would be obviously near the beginning of the period of
6 your employment?
7 A. No, I cannot remember with any clarity that anymore.
8 It was just a piece of equipment amongst several.
9 Q. But is there any doubt in your mind that you saw such
10 a thing?
11 A. I am sure I saw it, yes.
12 Q. Although perhaps you cannot remember the detail of it,
13 was it something that was portable?
14 A. Yes, I believe it was portable, yes. It was small
15 enough -- if it was not portable, I am sure I would
16 remember that it was not portable. It must have been
17 small enough to be carried quite easily.
18 Q. All right. This may be a bridge too far, but the sort
19 of size, can you remember even that, now?
20 A. There was a large table and there were several items on
21 it, so it must have been small enough to fit within
22 a small portion of the table.
23 Q. Right. Now, during training, did you become aware that
24 obviously operating abroad, as MI6 did most of the time,
25 that MI6 or SIS became involved in theatres of war

53

1 abroad where there was armed conflict between factions
2 within a country?
3 A. Yes, indeed. I was involved in one myself, yes.
4 Q. We may just come to the one you were involved in
5 yourself, but I want to ask -- and please understand,
6 it is a question that is carefully phrased and I am not
7 asking for detail -- were you at any time aware, whilst
8 you were working in this period of the early to
9 mid-1990s, of any SIS or MI6 involvement in the war that
10 was being waged within Angola?
11 A. Yes, I can say -- yes, there was --
12 Q. Don't give me the detail for the moment --
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. -- because there may be objection. I do not know.
15 A. That is what I am hesitating for, yes.
16 Q. I am not asking for the detail from you, but you
17 remember.
18 A. Mm.
19 Q. Thank you.
20 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Is the relevance of this
21 landmines?
22 MR MANSFIELD: It is. Sir, I am pausing because, of course,
23 what he has to say may be of importance in relation to
24 this. In view of who is coming next week, I would ask
25 permission to ask what he remembers about that in fact.

54

1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Is that going to get into
2 the detail?
3 MR MANSFIELD: Well, there is a risk of it. I am happy to
4 leave it for the moment, for consideration to be given
5 to that.
6 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: We will see what Mr Tam says
7 about this.
8 MR TAM: Sir, I was listening to see what the next question
9 was going to be, but if there is a risk of detail being
10 given, then that detail may well be detail which should
11 not be given.
12 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: The trouble is, once the detail
13 is given, it is then too late. That is the problem.
14 MR TAM: That is why I was listening to the question to see
15 exactly sort of answer might be --
16 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Mansfield is content to leave
17 this until next week, anyway, so that may be the way out
18 of this.
19 MR MANSFIELD: I think there may be time today to consider
20 how to deal with this because, obviously, as you have
21 rightly pointed out, it bears absolutely on what
22 Princess Diana was doing in 1997. I would want to ask
23 this witness, so that everyone knows what the question
24 is, what the role of MI6 was in Angola -- when he was
25 obviously part of MI6, what he learned to be that role.

55

1 That is all.
2 MR TAM: Can we take instructions on that and return to it?
3 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
4 MR MANSFIELD: I am sorry, Mr Tomlinson, we are obviously --
5 as I said at the beginning, I am not intending to put
6 you in a difficult position or anyone else for that
7 matter.
8 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You appreciate, Mr Tomlinson, we
9 are in delicate territory here and we all have to tread
10 rather carefully, including you.
11 A. Of course. I understand completely.
12 MR MANSFIELD: I hope that the path that I am treading with
13 you is a fairly obvious one so that you can see what is
14 coming in plenty of time and we can avoid any
15 difficulties.
16 Now I want to move on to what you remembered, not
17 today, but at a much earlier time, about obviously --
18 arising out of your work in the Balkans section; all
19 right?
20 Now, the position is this, is it not, that you were,
21 as you have indicated, dismissed? You served a prison
22 sentence -- you have explained all of that -- and then
23 you were released.
24 Now I want to ask you a little bit about what
25 happened after your release and before you reached

56

1 the doors of the juge in France in order to give an
2 account to that juge. All right?
3 It is that period of time. What I want to ask you
4 about is really matters that you have put in a statement
5 before, and, in particular, what happened at the hands
6 of the authorities during this period. Do you follow?
7 So we are dealing with the period after the spring
8 of 1995, after you have been released, but before
9 September 1998, when you see the juge. So it is that
10 period. First of all, were you arrested or detained
11 during that period?
12 A. No, after I was released from prison on May 1st, I was
13 on probation, and I had three months' probation, which
14 was the law at the time. That probation was extremely
15 strictly observed.
16 I mean throughout my prison sentence, I was made --
17 all the regulations in my case were followed
18 exceptionally hard. For example, what somebody who has
19 never been to jail before who has never committed any
20 offence, if they were sent to jail for a white collar
21 offence, they would not be held as a category A
22 prisoner. I was held as a category A prisoner in
23 Belmarsh. After I was released, I was given probation
24 and I had to go to every single probation meeting --
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Do you in fact mean "probation"

57

1 or do you mean that you were on licence?
2 A. I am sorry, that is the word, "licence". I am sorry,
3 licence. I had to observe it very, very strictly.
4 During that time, I was aware that I was under
5 surveillance. On one particular occasion that I was
6 actually followed -- because I had to go and hand my
7 passport in to a police station and I remember being
8 followed down when I went to the police station.
9 At the end of that three months, I was very
10 concerned about being re-arrested. In fact I absolutely
11 believed that I was going to be re-arrested and put back
12 into Belmarsh because I could not understand why -- if
13 that was not the case, why MI6 had not made any attempts
14 at conciliation towards me.
15 Clearly they were putting me under surveillance,
16 they were putting me under a lot of pressure, and
17 I realised at that point that the only option for me
18 really, if I wanted to try and establish some form of
19 career and to get my life back on track, was to leave
20 Britain. So at the end of my probation I left Britain.
21 MR MANSFIELD: I am looking at -- if you have the document
22 in front of you, it is an affidavit. It is headed
23 "Affidavit of Richard Tomlinson". It is not dated in
24 fact, or at least -- I have two copies of it -- neither
25 of them are dated, although they are both exactly

58

1 the same. I do not know whether you can help now,
2 perhaps you cannot, whether it was 1998 or 1999 that
3 this one was written.
4 A. No, I cannot remember.
5 Q. Very well. If you look at paragraph 9 in there, it is
6 prefaced by indicating to the juge -- because this is
7 a document that you produced for the juge in France, is
8 it not?
9 A. I believe so, yes.
10 Q. It is headed that, "Affidavit of Richard Tomlinson to
11 Judge Herve Stephan". Then, at the top of this page,
12 just before paragraph 9, what you are doing is
13 indicating in your view the lengths to which MI6,
14 the CIA and the DST have taken to deter you from giving
15 this evidence -- and I will come to what this evidence
16 was -- and "... subsequently to stop me talking about
17 it. It suggests that they have something to hide".
18 Now, do you stand you by that?
19 A. I do not -- I think that is an inference that you have
20 made. I do not know whether what they did to me was
21 because they felt that I had something to hide. I do
22 not know, but I stand by the fact that they arrested me
23 in a very violent fashion when I had not done anything
24 and I -- quite what they were afraid of that I might
25 reveal, I do not know. That is for them to answer.

59

1 Q. I understand that. I am only using your words "suggest
2 they have something to hide". It is not my suggestion.
3 It is your suggestion there.
4 Now I want to go through what has happened to you.
5 On Friday 31st July, do you see, 1998, shortly before --
6 well, your appointment was in September, I believe --
7 you were arrested by the DST -- what were the DST?
8 A. That is the Direction Surveillance Territoire, which
9 is -- I would guess the nearest equivalent in Britain is
10 the Special Branch.
11 Q. -- in your Paris hotel room. You indicate that although
12 you have no record of violent conduct, you were arrested
13 with such ferocity and at gunpoint that you received
14 a broken rib. You were taken to the headquarters of
15 the DST and interrogated for 38 hours. Is that correct?
16 A. That is correct, yes.
17 Q. What were they asking about, can you remember?
18 A. No. Principally they wanted to take my computers off me
19 and my PDA, the Psion organiser. Most of my questions
20 were who I had been talking to, who I had contact with,
21 why I had left Britain, what I was intending to do,
22 where I was intending to live and I answered them as
23 best I could. I believe the principal reason for it was
24 to take my computers off me, which they did.
25 Q. Where did these computer end up, do you know?

60

1 A. They took them back to the UK.
2 Q. They took them back to UK. In this you indicate:
3 "Despite my repeated requests, I was never given any
4 justification for the arrest, was not shown the arrest
5 warrant. Even though I was released without charge,
6 the DST confiscated from me my laptop computer and my
7 organiser. They illegally gave these to MI6 who took
8 them back to the UK. They were not returned for
9 six months, which is illegal and caused me great
10 inconvenience and financial cost."
11 At that time, were you interviewed by anyone from
12 MI6 in Paris while you were detained?
13 A. Not by MI6, but by Special Branch officers, police
14 Special Branch officers, who were in Paris, and they
15 interviewed me.
16 Q. They interviewed you. What were they wanting to know,
17 do you remember?
18 A. It was them that had requested that the French arrest
19 me, so it was the Special Branch officers who were
20 questioning me via the French officers because
21 the Special Branch could not make questions to me
22 directly on French territory. So the Special Branch
23 officers would make questions to the French officers and
24 then the French officers would make the questions to me.
25 So both French and British officers were present at

61

1 the interviews.
2 Q. Now had you in fact been doing anything illegal in
3 France?
4 A. Not at all, no. Not at all, no.
5 Q. Now, the next paragraph, 10, in the affidavit you
6 provided, you say that on Friday 7th August 1998,
7 you boarded a Qantas flight at Auckland International
8 Airport, New Zealand, for a flight to Sydney, where you
9 were due to give a television interview to an Australian
10 television company. You were in your seat awaiting
11 take-off when an official boarded the plane and told you
12 to get off.
13 "At the air bridge he told me that the airline had
14 received a fax from Canberra saying there was a problem
15 with my papers. I immediately asked to see the fax, but
16 was told it was not possible. I believe that this is
17 because it did not exist. This action was a ploy to
18 keep me in New Zealand so that the New Zealand police
19 could take further action against me. I had been back
20 in my Auckland hotel room for about half an hour when
21 the New Zealand police, the NZSIS (the New Zealand
22 Secret Intelligence Service) raided me. After being
23 detained and searched for about three hours, they
24 eventually confiscated from me all my remaining computer
25 equipment that the French DST had not succeeded from

62

1 taking from me. Again, I did not get some of these
2 items back until six months later."
3 Just dealing with that, where did the items that
4 they took from you in New Zealand end up; do you know?
5 A. Yes, they went back to the UK too.
6 Q. They went back to the UK as well.
7 Then you move to the next paragraph:
8 "Shortly after I had given this evidence to
9 Juge Stephan, I was invited to talk about this evidence
10 in a live interview on America's NBC Television. I flew
11 from Geneva to JFK Airport on Sunday 30th August to give
12 the interview in New York."
13 Can I just pause there because dates may be
14 important. Is this in 1998 or is it in 1999, this trip?
15 A. Yes, this is in 1998, I am pretty sure.
16 Q. Because was the procedure in France that you would
17 provide to the juge, before the interview, material
18 indicating what it was that you were going to tell
19 the juge?
20 A. I cannot remember now, I am sorry. I cannot remember
21 what the exact sequence was then.
22 Q. All right:
23 "Shortly after arrival at John F Kennedy Airport,
24 the captain of the Swissair flight told all passengers
25 to return to their seats. Four US Immigration Authority

63

1 officers entered the plane, came straight to my seat,
2 asked for my passport and identity, then frogmarched off
3 the plane. I was taken to the Immigration Detention
4 Centre, photographed, fingerprinted, manacled by my
5 ankle to a chair for seven hours, served with
6 deportation papers and then returned on the next
7 available plane to Geneva. I was not allowed to make
8 any telephone calls to the representatives of NBC
9 awaiting me in the airport. The US immigration
10 officers, who were all openly sympathetic to my
11 situation and apologised for treating me so badly,
12 openly admitted that they were acting under
13 the instructions of the CIA."
14 Now, again, on that occasion, was any material
15 removed or not from you or perhaps you don't remember?
16 A. No, I do not think it was. I do not think I had
17 anything left. It had all been taken from me earlier.
18 Q. There was nothing left, all right.
19 I am sorry for the interlude. We are trying to sort
20 out the date of which year --
21 A. I think -- when I said, "Moreover, shortly after I had
22 given this evidence ..." , I think that must have been
23 a letter to him by post. I had not actually been to see
24 him at that time. I think that may be what you were --
25 Q. It was what I was inferring might be the possibility.

64

1 A. That was the case, but I cannot remember --
2 Q. But --
3 A. I remember I wrote to him at some point via a lawyer in
4 France and that must have been what I was referring to
5 then.
6 Q. We know you did do that. Paragraph 12 is the one that
7 sets a slight conundrum because you say "in January of
8 this year", so the question is which year.
9 A. It must have been 1999 because I am sure I would have
10 ordered the paragraphs chronologically, so I imagine
11 that I was writing this in 1999. So on paragraph 12,
12 I was saying "In January of this year", ie 1999, and
13 that would fit with the chronological order of events as
14 well.
15 Q. Right, I think we did imagine that is what you meant.
16 You booked a chalet in the village of Samoens in the
17 French Alps for ten days snow-boarding and so forth.
18 You picked up your parents from Geneva Airport in a hire
19 car on the evening of January 8th and set off for
20 the French border. At the French Customs post, your car
21 was stopped and you were detained. Four officers from
22 the DSD held you for four hours.
23 I am going to pause there. Did they interview you?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. What was it about this time?

65

1 A. I cannot remember. They wanted to know what I was doing
2 going to France. They did not say anything specific.
3 It was more like -- oh yes, they asked is it true that
4 I work for MI6, so I answered truthfully, and then they
5 asked me what did I do at MI6 and they asked me a lot of
6 questions about my activities in MI6, but I think that
7 was more for their personal curiosity than anything.
8 They asked me some really quite banal questions about
9 guns and weapons. But I think that the impression I had
10 was that they were -- the objective of stopping me was
11 to stop me going to France, that they were buying time
12 for someone else to come down from -- that is right,
13 because we had to wait for another officer to come down,
14 a more senior officer. So when the more senior officer
15 came down, I was served with papers telling me to get
16 out of the country and not come back again -- in fact
17 there was no time limit. I was just told I would have
18 to leave France.
19 Q. Trying to summarising the rest of what you have written
20 in paragraph 12, was it your belief at the time that
21 this resulted from MI6 activity or advice to the DST?
22 A. I am absolutely sure even now that that is the only
23 mechanism by which that would happen because I have
24 never broken any law in France, and there is no reason
25 why the French authorities would have ever intervened in

66

1 that nature if they had not been asked specifically by
2 a foreign intelligence service, and the only foreign
3 intelligence service that could be is MI6.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: But does it surprise you,
5 Mr Tomlinson, that a foreign country, France or America,
6 should be nervous about your coming to their country,
7 bearing in mind that you were convicted under the
8 Official Secrets Act in this country?
9 A. It does strike me as strange because why would France be
10 worried about me breaking the Official Secrets Act of
11 Britain? I would have no access to any French secrets.
12 So that does not at all translate into any possibility
13 of me breaking a French law because, even if I had
14 the position to do so, which I do not, I do not know any
15 French secrets, so it is of no interest at all to France
16 to -- in fact I have certainly been told by the French
17 authorities on many occasions that they don't give
18 a damn about me breaking the Official Secrets Act in
19 Britain. It is an irrelevance to them.
20 So it is quite clear that both the French and
21 the Americans were -- and indeed the Australians,
22 because I have been refused visas to visit Australia on
23 numerous occasions too -- have all been acting at the
24 request or suggestion of Britain. My belief is that
25 that request or suggestion would have come from MI6

67

1 because that is the only organisation in Britain which
2 would have been motivated to do that.
3 MR MANSFIELD: I want to move to a different period, but
4 it is the same topic.
5 After the inquests were opened in the United
6 Kingdom, and inquiry was established or an investigation
7 under Lord Stevens, and you were seen by officers in
8 that squad on two occasions, once in 2004 and again in
9 2005. You have the records. I may have to come back to
10 those later. You mentioned this morning twice
11 the pressure you felt under in relation to those
12 interviews. Now, could you just describe to the jury
13 what the pressure was that you felt during those
14 interviews?
15 A. Well, first, it was a very, very long process, a very
16 long working day, and I remember it going on to a point
17 at which I, you know, was becoming very tired. So there
18 was a question of it being a long process and I just
19 wanted to bring it to an end really.
20 You know, as in any -- the police are people who are
21 experts at, how would I say, extracting the story they
22 wish to hear from someone who is in detention with them.
23 You know, they are very, very good at that and I am not
24 necessarily very good at that. It is a long
25 inquisitorial process and there are times when you

68

1 become slightly tired and you say things that later on
2 in life you slightly regret having given into. And
3 I think that was probably the case there.
4 Q. What was the story that you felt they wanted you to
5 tell?
6 A. I think principally they realised that they had a lot of
7 work in front of them to go through all the MI6 files
8 and then trying to, I suppose -- they wanted to be able
9 to exclude as much work as possible from their workload.
10 So they asked me quite a lot about me trying to remember
11 exactly where various files were, which I was not able
12 to answer with any particular clarity. They pushed
13 very, very hard on some small details and skated over
14 things which were somewhat more significant, I thought.
15 Q. Now, does that apply to both or just the one in 2004,
16 because you are seen again in 2005 where you are --
17 we don't have a record of exactly what is put to you,
18 but if you just look at the record in 2005 -- do you
19 have that one there?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. All right, "Interview regarding issues". It is clear,
22 as you look through it, on the various topics over
23 the page -- "Henri Paul":
24 "RT accepts because of what we have told him ..."
25 This is one in which the police are putting to you

69

1 a lot of other information that they have, by then,
2 obtained from other sources. Do you follow?
3 A. That is definitely the case. When I saw them in 2004,
4 they were asking me for information in a very
5 non-confrontational manner, but in a subsequent
6 interview they had clearly gained a lot of information
7 and it was much more adversarial.
8 Q. In relation to that one, did you get an impression of
9 what it was, in the 2005 interview, they wanted you to
10 say?
11 A. I think they certainly tried to put me under a lot of
12 pressure to withdraw the statement that I had made about
13 the assassination plot against someone in MI6, but as we
14 have subsequently seen this morning, they have
15 acknowledged that that exists. They really wanted to do
16 their best for me to try and withdraw that because they
17 didn't want that knowledge being brought out into
18 the public domain. So they did try their very best to
19 try to make me withdraw all that.
20 I told them that it is absolutely the case that
21 there is a minute within MI6 in which someone proposes
22 that they assassinate someone. They then submitted,
23 "Yes, there is, but it was not Milosevic". It could
24 well be the case, I cannot deny that, but the simple
25 fact remains that there is a minute there in which they

70

1 propose to assassinate somebody and they tried to get me
2 to withdraw that.
3 Q. I want to deal with that first of all, if I may. Again,
4 I am not going to seek to put you in any difficulty
5 about names, as has already been made clear to you. You
6 have given the broad outline, but I want to follow up
7 some details. First of all, the person, the colleague
8 who showed you the document -- so, first of all, can
9 we deal with him?
10 Now, he has a hieroglyphic of "A", as far as our
11 proceedings are concerned, so I am going to call him
12 "A". Is that all right? Can you follow if I do that?
13 I want to know a little bit about him, without
14 disclosing who he is, in order to gather the
15 significance of what you saw. First of all, was he head
16 of a section or head of an operation?
17 A. He was the subhead of a section. He was sort of second
18 in charge of a section.
19 Q. How old was he, roughly speaking? Do you know?
20 A. I would guess he was about 30; in his early 30s.
21 Q. How long had he been with MI6 by this stage?
22 A. About seven years, I believe, about six or seven years.
23 He had been in for a long enough period of time to have
24 done at least one overseas posting, so he was quite an
25 experienced officer.

71

1 Q. You indicated earlier, in partly dealing with this, that
2 he was an ambitious individual.
3 A. Yes, he was a serious, hardworking and diligent person,
4 like most people in MI6 are. He would not have been
5 recruited if he was not of that nature. He was someone
6 who wanted to make a career and to get on and to impress
7 his superiors and what have you, but that is perfectly
8 normal in MI6. I think we all were like that.
9 Q. The question I want to ask you here is: it is going to
10 be suggested that this sort of thing would never even be
11 contemplated. If the policy was never to contemplate
12 even this kind of activity, have you any idea why
13 somebody of his experience and his responsibility would
14 be bothered to draft such a document?
15 MR TAM: Sir, normally I would not object to a question like
16 that but this is asking the witness to speculate about
17 somebody else's motives and I am concerned, not because
18 it is a question that is arguably not one that the
19 witness can really help with, but because, in answering
20 it, sensitive details might get revealed if he is
21 invited to speculate in this way about something which
22 he probably knows nothing about.
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Well, I am not sure that it goes
24 quite that far. But in a sense, it is really comment,
25 isn't it, Mr Mansfield?

72

1 MR MANSFIELD: Yes, it is bordering on that. We are dealing
2 with somebody here who is, in a sense, an expert. He
3 would normally be regarded as an expert because he has
4 had that experience within MI6.
5 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Well, you could ask him if they
6 were encouraged to think laterally.
7 MR MANSFIELD: Yes. Well, I will ask that question.
8 I think you heard the question. I think I know
9 the answer, but anyway. Were you encouraged to think
10 laterally in MI6?
11 A. Well, yes, very much so. We were always encouraged to
12 be imaginative and to think of new operations and
13 suchlike. But nevertheless, I was -- at the time I was
14 very surprised. I think I have already said this
15 already. My first reaction was: is this a practical
16 joke? Is he just winding me up? This was my absolute
17 first reaction, but then -- I am sure it is okay for me
18 to say this -- I know that it was not because it was an
19 accountable minute.
20 There are different forms of paperwork, some of
21 which are held accountable and some which are not in MI6
22 at the time, and this was a document that was
23 accountable, ie it was going to be held on record. So
24 you wouldn't -- no one would write a joke memo on an
25 accountable memo because that would go into your

73

1 personal record. It is something that you do not mess
2 around with, basically.
3 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Mansfield, I think there is
4 a question that might be asked here, if Mr Tam does not
5 see any dangers in it: what I was proposing to ask was,
6 when you were trained by MI6, were you instructed that
7 MI6 agents were required to operate within the
8 restraints of the criminal law?
9 A. Yes, we were. We were advised that, yes, but at
10 the same time there are various facets to that because
11 when you are overseas, whether that is the case or not,
12 which legal system you come under when you are overseas,
13 and there was definitely, during our training,
14 a sufficient amount of speculation within the group of
15 officers who were training together that we would talk
16 about it amongst ourselves, and we were never entirely
17 sure if what we were being told was always strictly held
18 to and accounted to.
19 I do remember during my training programme another
20 trainee specifically asked a question to a senior
21 officer about whether MI6 do break the law or do kill
22 people. The senior officer -- and this was in one of
23 the training talks that we were given -- and the senior
24 officer evaded the question and did not answer directly.
25 His entire countenance and bearing towards this question

74

1 was such that he did not want to answer it in any more
2 detail.
3 This led to a lot of speculation amongst us
4 afterwards: well, what is the case, do we keep always
5 within the law or do we not?"
6 I think you also have to bear in mind that we are
7 talking about 1992, which was at the time when MI6 was
8 avowed and became completely accountable, and I think
9 that prior to 1992, there was a lot less accountability
10 to the law.
11 After a period, after 1992, MI6 became more
12 accountable, but during that period there was no doubt
13 a transition period where a lot of new restrictions and
14 laws were being discussed and sored out and drafted and
15 discussed with the Government. So there was
16 a transition period and I was in MI6 during that
17 transitionary period.
18 There were other occasions I can remember talking to
19 another senior officer and asking them about the death
20 of someone in circumstances which were slightly odd.
21 Again the answer was not direct -- was not a direct,
22 "Absolutely no way do we get involved in that sort of
23 thing". It was an obfuscated answer.
24 So I think it is fair to say -- I am sure now, and
25 we are now in 2008, that MI6 is probably very, very

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1 accountable because the laws in accountability have been
2 tightened and that is the case with the American
3 intelligence agencies and other intelligence agencies,
4 but I was there when there was a period of transition
5 and I think there was a lack of clarity at the time.
6 MR MANSFIELD: I will have a little more to ask you on that
7 in light of a letter that you wrote. Still dealing with
8 A and his background and so on in relation to this
9 proposal -- I have two more questions on this.
10 The remembrance that you had much nearer the time,
11 in other words -- I think you said you began writing
12 about this plan for the purposes of a book -- I think
13 you said "1997". Is that when you think you started
14 writing it?
15 A. I honestly just cannot remember anymore. I started
16 writing it when I moved to Spain. I would have to dig
17 around to know what date I moved to Spain, but it was
18 when I moved to Spain.
19 Q. Yes. Very well. At that time, whatever time it was,
20 either 1996/1997/1998, somewhere in that region, those
21 years, the person who was the target of the proposal was
22 Milosevic; is that how you remember it?
23 A. That is how I remember it. Subsequently the police said
24 to me that it was not Milosevic, it was someone else,
25 but I cannot dispute that because I cannot specifically

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1 remember now and it may well be that it was someone
2 else, but the fact is, they did propose to assassinate
3 someone.
4 Q. The reason I ask you is this: Milosevic is obviously and
5 was at that time a well-known figure, particularly in
6 the theatre that you were operating in and a significant
7 name, was he not?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. What I am trying to get to is whether, you see, what you
10 saw was a proposal that did relate to Milosevic and
11 there was yet another one relating to the person that
12 Mr A says he did write. Now is that a possibility?
13 A. It is a possibility, yes. You know, I did not have
14 access to everything there at the time and I cannot
15 remember the dates exactly now.
16 MR MANSFIELD: Sir, what I would like to do -- it is
17 the only question in relation to a name. I am not going
18 to do it publicly. Our copies are redacted in any
19 event -- is, if it is permissible, for him to see
20 the name of the target in private, as suggested by A, to
21 see whether in fact there was any possibility that what
22 he saw originally was that. I do not know whether he
23 has ever been told that.
24 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Tam?
25 MR TAM: Again, that is something on which we will have to

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1 take instructions. Apart from anything else, with the
2 technical difficulties or possible technical
3 difficulties --
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes, well, I do not think you are
5 concerned about the technical difficulties. You are
6 concerned about rather more wide-ranging difficulties.
7 MR TAM: Those as well, yes.
8 MR MANSFIELD: Well, I am wondering if therefore I can leave
9 that until it can be resolved because I would ask that
10 he is allowed to see the name that A suggests.
11 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Maybe it can be resolved over
12 the midday adjournment.
13 Can I put one other thing? I do not know if it has
14 been put to you. I think you don't know what A may say
15 when he comes here, but this is what he says in relation
16 to you. He says:
17 "Before shredding my copy of the memo, I showed it
18 to Tomlinson and explained the content and the reaction
19 that it had received."
20 Now, did he ever, first of all, tell you that he was
21 shredding that document?
22 A. No, he gave no indication that he was going to do that,
23 and I am very, very surprised that he did it because
24 we were not allowed to shred things like that. That is
25 like -- in parlance at the time, that would be regarded

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1 as a hanging offence. You just don't shred accountable
2 documents and I am astonished at that claim that it was
3 shredded.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Was it an accountable document
5 because of the minute reference you say that it had
6 attached to it?
7 A. Yes, indeed.
8 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: If it had not had that, then it
9 would not have been an accountable document, is that
10 right?
11 A. Yes, if it had been what is called a "memo slip", which
12 is like a pink document which quite often would be
13 handwritten and just passed around, those could be
14 destroyed. They generally were not, but they could be.
15 But this was a minute and I do distinctly remember that
16 it was a minute because that is what made me think that
17 he was not joking, because if it had just been a memo,
18 I could have accepted it was a practical joke, but
19 it was a minute board.
20 It was detachable -- the way it worked was you had
21 little squares that you could take off this minute
22 board. Every time you passed the minute board, the
23 minute, to another colleague you took off a little
24 square and put this in your out-tray. This was how
25 the documents were traced around MI6 at the time. So

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1 this was where -- every document was accountable.
2 The centralised clerical system would know where each
3 accountable document particularly was in the office.
4 So the fact that it had a --
5 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: So just to be --
6 A. No, sorry -- the fact that it had a minute board on the
7 back meant that it was an accountable document and it
8 could not be shredded, because every minute board had an
9 individual number or was sequentially numbered.
10 So as soon as you asked for a minute board, that
11 meant that you were preparing an accountable document
12 and there would be a gap in the minute boards if it was
13 destroyed. It is just not permissible; it is just
14 a hanging offence, as we used to call it.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: In short does it come to this:
16 documents with a minute board attached could not be
17 shredded and documents that didn't have a minute board
18 attached could be shredded?
19 A. You know, at the time I never heard of things being
20 shredded at all. We didn't shred things at all at the
21 time. But potentially something that did not have a
22 minute board could be shredded, but something that did
23 have a minute board on the back could not be and would
24 never be. To be honest I am really surprised at anyone
25 saying that they shredded anything at MI6 because, in

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1 general terms, we did not, and anything that was
2 shredded -- if it was destroyed, it went through
3 a vetting process before it was destroyed as well. So
4 I find that quite a surprising claim.
5 MR MANSFIELD: I want you to look -- I think you have it
6 there. I mentioned it a moment ago. You not only wrote
7 to the magistrate or juge in France before you actually
8 spoke to the juge, do you recall you also wrote at the
9 time to the head of a British organisation called
10 Liberty in South London, and a man called John Wadham,
11 who was then in charge. Do you remember doing that?
12 A. Look, I wrote many letters to him because he was my
13 solicitor who represented me at my trial, so I had a lot
14 of correspondence with him.
15 Q. The letter should be there amongst your bundle, with
16 this at the top; in other words, it is your initials,
17 "RJCT/6". Do you have that?
18 A. No, I am afraid we don't have it, no.
19 Q. I am sorry, because we thought at our end that all
20 the documents that related to you had been taken. This
21 was a document, this letter, that you provided in
22 fact -- you provided six documents to the police
23 earlier.
24 I am going to ask therefore, unless there is an
25 objection -- because all the sensitive parts of

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1 the letter have been redacted, so I am just pausing to
2 make sure there is no -- sorry -- I will give the label.
3 It is RJCT/6. It was one of six documents provided.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: This is one of a number of
5 documents that reached me this morning, I think from
6 those instructing you, via the inquest office.
7 MR MANSFIELD: No. This was a document that did not come
8 via us. This was a document that was originally --
9 we asked for it, a copy of it. It was originally
10 provided in fact --
11 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Well, I do not think it is in
12 bundle 12.
13 MR MANSFIELD: No, it is not. But if you look at --
14 I am sorry to do this in your presence,
15 Mr Tomlinson.
16 If you look at the very first page of divider 10,
17 you will see a statement in French from a French,
18 Nicolas Pajani.
19 In that he specifies a number of documents, 1, 2, 3,
20 4, 5 and 6. We had the others, but we did not have 6,
21 so we asked for the sixth one, which was dated
22 11th September 1998.
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: It has a couple of Paget stamps
24 on it, hasn't it?
25 MR MANSFIELD: Yes, it does. It came to us and it may have

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1 come to you, sir, yesterday, from Mr Smith. So that is
2 where it has come from. There were other documents that
3 we also provided that Paget had seen, but they are much
4 the same as others. But this letter, unless there is
5 a --
6 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I would not have thought there
7 would be any objection.
8 MR MANSFIELD: No, there is not. I am going to ask for it
9 to go on screen because -- again, I am not going to ask
10 you to try to remember something without the document.
11 It is going to go on screen and hopefully you are going
12 to be able to see it.
13 There we are. This was -- so you have the context,
14 the dates on the top are in fact dates when various
15 Metropolitan Police officers took custody of it or
16 produced it or whatever. In fact, this letter was
17 attached to a letter you sent to John Wadham on
18 11th September 1998. We have the accompanying letter.
19 I am not troubling with you that.
20 So, you can see the title, "MI6, 1992, proposal to
21 assassinate Milosevic of Serbia ..." and so on. Then
22 you write this:
23 "Dear sir, I would like to bring to your attention
24 a proposal by MI6 to assassinate President Milosevic of
25 Serbia. My motive in doing this is to draw to your

83

1 attention the casual and cavalier attitude that many MI6
2 officers have to British and international law."
3 I pause there. This may relate to the question you
4 have already been asked about attitudes to law. Did
5 that properly represent, at that time, in 1998, why you
6 were in part revealing this material?
7 A. Yes, at the time, yes.
8 Q. The officer who wrote this proposal clearly could (and
9 in my view, should) be charged with conspiracy to
10 murder. He will no doubt escape unpunished, like many
11 other MI6 officers who routinely break the law. This
12 lack of legal accountability of MI6 officers needs to be
13 addressed urgently."
14 Now, I want to ask you about those sentences. First
15 of all, in fact, consideration has been given to any
16 prosecution of him and he is not going to be. Did you
17 know that?
18 A. No, I did not know that, no.
19 Q. Does that surprise you?
20 A. No, it does not surprise me, no.
21 Q. Secondly, "... like many other MI6 officers who
22 routinely break the law ..."
23 Did you have something in mind there?
24 A. No, not really. It needs to be -- bearing -- the tone
25 of that is quite a strong statement. I had just spent

84

1 six months of my life in a maximum security jail for
2 revealing absolutely nothing at all to a New Zealand
3 citizen in Sydney, Australia, and I was pretty annoyed
4 at the fact that I had been prosecuted for doing
5 absolutely nothing at all whereby MI6 and MI5 officers
6 propose to commit very serious crimes and escape any
7 sort of legal accountability whatsoever. So I think
8 I was very angry at the double standards of the Crown
9 Prosecution Service towards MI6 and MI5 at the time.
10 Q. Right. Now, the next paragraph you indicate that from
11 March 1992 until September 1993, you worked in the East
12 European controllerate of MI6 under the staff
13 designation UKA/7:
14 "My role was to carry out natural cover operations
15 (undercover as a businessman or journalist, et cetera)
16 in Eastern Europe."
17 Pausing there, in your book you do deal with some of
18 those operations and the sort of work that you had to
19 do, do you not?
20 A. That is correct, yes.
21 Q. "The Balkan War was in its early stages at this time so
22 my responsibilities were increasingly directed to this
23 arena. My work thus involved frequent contact with
24 the officer responsible for developing and targeting
25 operations in the Balkans. At the time this was ...

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1 [it is redacted]."
2 We assume that that is A, is it, who should be in
3 there?
4 A. I think so, yes.
5 Q. I am sorry that you don't have the original there:
6 "... who worked under the staff designation P4/OPS."
7 Does that have any particular meaning?
8 A. I hesitate to answer that because I do not think it is
9 necessary or directly relevant and perhaps the --
10 Q. Very well. I do not press you.
11 "We would frequently meet in his office on the
12 11th floor of Century House to discuss proposed and
13 ongoing operations that I was involved in and, indeed,
14 many other operations which I was not myself involved
15 in.
16 "During one such meeting in the summer of 1992 [and
17 again I am assuming it is A] casually mentioned that he
18 was working on a proposal to assassinate
19 President Milosevic of Serbia. I laughed and dismissed
20 his claim as an idle boast as I (naively) thought that
21 MI6 would never contemplate such an operation. [I am
22 inserting A on the assumption it is correct]. [A]
23 insisted that it was true and appeared somewhat offended
24 that I did not believe him."
25 Is that how you recollect it at the time, that is in

86

1 1998, when you wrote this letter?
2 A. Yes. I was a new boy there. I was a probationer and
3 there was a lot of leg pulling and practical jokes in
4 that organisation and I assumed that he was winding me
5 up.
6 Q. "However, I still presumed that he was just pulling my
7 leg and thought nothing more of the incident.
8 "A few days later, I called in again to [I assume
9 A's] office. After a few moments of conversation, he
10 triumphantly pulled out a document from a file on his
11 desk, tossed it over to me and suggested I read it. To
12 my astonishment, it was indeed a proposal to assassinate
13 President Milosevic of Serbia.
14 "The minute was approximately two pages long and had
15 a yellow minute card attached to it [and you dealt with
16 this already]which signified that it was an accountable
17 document rather than a draft proposal. It was entitled
18 'The need to assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia'.
19 In the distribution list in the margin were P4 (head of
20 Balkan operations, then ... ), SBO1/T (security officer
21 responsible for the Eastern European operations [and
22 then there is a name and I am not interested in the
23 names]) and then C/CEE (controller of East European
24 operations [and then there was the possibility of two
25 names]) and last, Modus/SO the SAS liaison officer

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1 attached to MI6 [and then you put a name] and H/SECT
2 (the private secretary to ..."
3 Sir, I would want to suggest the status of
4 the person, not the name, but if that is objected to,
5 I will wait and see.
6 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: No objection.
7 MR MANSFIELD: This is where I might have got it wrong.
8 Again, I do not know, but I have tried to piece it
9 together. Was the person to whom he was private
10 secretary the head of MI6?
11 A. That is correct, yes.
12 Q. The first page of the document was a political
13 'justification' because there was evidence that he was
14 providing arms and so forth. We can see what that is
15 and you have touched on it before.
16 "The remainder of the document proposed three
17 methods ..."
18 These are in your book as well and I just want to
19 ask you about this.
20 "The remainder of the document proposed three
21 methods to assassinate Milosevic."
22 Before I ask you a little bit about the detail
23 without again compromising anyone, if this was not on
24 that document, where could you have possibly got this
25 from? In other words, what is the source of these

88

1 methods? I mean, have you imagined them yourself or
2 have you got it from somewhere?
3 A. It is such a long time ago that I was there at the time
4 and that I wrote that document. As I have said before,
5 it is very difficult for me now to remember what
6 I remembered at the time and what I subsequently
7 learned. I think there is -- it could well be that
8 there is -- I have to say, it strikes me now, looking at
9 that document now, that there is a lot of detail in
10 there which potentially might not have been in
11 a broad-brush appraisal. So it could be that I was
12 mixing with what I had subsequently learned there.
13 I just cannot remember. It is just too long ago for me
14 now to remember that with any great clarity.
15 Q. I appreciate that about now, but this is a document that
16 was written some time in the summer of 1998. Do you
17 follow? In other words, it is only a few years,
18 three/four/five years, since you had left the service.
19 Do you follow?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. "The first method was to train and equip a Serbian
22 paramilitary opposition group to assassinate Milosevic
23 in Serbia."
24 I am assuming it is A:
25 "[A] argued that this method would have

89

1 the advantage of deniability ..."
2 Now, was that a concept that was discussed inside
3 MI6?
4 A. Frequently, yes, making an operation deniable was always
5 a consideration so that, if things went wrong, you could
6 plausibly demonstrate that the British Government had
7 nothing to do with it.
8 Q. So it is not just a question of operating under cover,
9 perhaps with a false cover; it is also operating in
10 a way that nobody knows this is what you are doing and
11 then, if it happens, denying that you have done it.
12 That is what it comes to, doesn't it?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Just continuing:
15 "... but the disadvantage that control of
16 the operation would be low and the chances of success
17 unpredictable."
18 Now, again, are these the kind of concepts --
19 control and predictability -- that you would necessarily
20 have been talking about in MI6?
21 A. Yes, indeed. All our training was -- in designing
22 operations and carrying out them, they were constant
23 considerations in our training, as you would expect
24 really.
25 Q. Yes. I am not suggesting that you would not expect all

90

1 of this.
2 "The second method was to use the increment [I have
3 already asked you about this], a small cell of the SAS
4 or SBS which is especially selected and trained to carry
5 out operations exclusively for MI5/MI6 to infiltrate
6 Serbia and attack Milosevic, either with a bomb or
7 sniper ambush. [A] argued that this plan would be
8 the most reliable, but would be undeniable if it went
9 wrong."
10 Does it follow that if it went right, it would be
11 deniable?
12 A. Well, if it went right anonymously, they would have got
13 out of the country anonymously so there would never have
14 been any question of them being caught and interrogated.
15 But clearly, if it went wrong and they were caught and
16 interrogated, it would be very difficult to deny them
17 because no British Government would really leave their
18 highly trained and very loyal soldiers to be imprisoned
19 in that fashion, so the British Government would have to
20 be involved if they were, for some reason, compromised
21 and caught.
22 Q. Then we get to the third proposal, which is A again,
23 I assume:
24 "The third proposal was to kill Milosevic in
25 a staged car crash, possibly during one of his visits to

91

1 the ICFY (International Conference on the former
2 Yugoslavia) in Geneva, Switzerland. [A] even provided
3 a suggestion about how this could be done, such as
4 disorientating Milosevic's chauffeur using a blinding
5 strobe light as the cavalcade passed through one of
6 Geneva's motorway tunnels."
7 Now, of course, it is now many years later.
8 I appreciate the difficulty of remembering. Could these
9 options have in fact been discussed with you by A, in
10 fact, but not actually written down at that point? Is
11 that a possibility?
12 A. Yes I suppose it is because I am sure we would have
13 discussed it a little bit. Normally if we were looking
14 at some something together, we would talk about it. It
15 would be normal, yes.
16 Q. "There was no doubt in my mind, when I read [A's]
17 proposal, that he was entirely serious about pursuing
18 his plan. [A] was an ambitious and serious officer who
19 would not frivolise his career by making such a proposal
20 in jest or merely to impress me. However, I heard no
21 more about the progress of this proposal and did not
22 expect to, as I was not on its distribution list.
23 "I ask you to investigate this matter fully.
24 I believe that legal action should be taken ..."
25 Now that was that letter.

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1 I want to ask you -- it is still on that topic --
2 just a little bit more about MI6 and involvement, do you
3 follow, in the light of answers you have given today.
4 What you have said today is that a plan of this kind
5 you would not expect to have been conducted by
6 "the service". You said not impossible but very
7 difficult. All right? Institutionally difficult.
8 What you have said today and before today is that it
9 could have been done independently and it is that that
10 I want to ask you about. First of all, what did you
11 mean when you said that today and you have said it
12 before, as I have said, that it could be done
13 independently?
14 A. I think nowadays that would not be the case, but I think
15 in the olden days there could potentially -- there
16 was -- the intelligence services were not as tightly
17 controlled as I have no doubt they are nowadays.
18 I think that that has been controlled a lot more deeply.
19 There were -- as in the public domain, there was, at the
20 time of the Harold Wilson Government -- I think it was
21 quite well established now -- there was a cabal of MI5
22 officers who were interested in -- or were talking
23 loosely about a plot and there have been other
24 incidences where MI5 and MI6 officers have done things
25 independently well outside of the control of

93

1 the organisation. I don't think it is something that
2 happens regularly and I don't think it could ever happen
3 nowadays.
4 Q. In relation to those days -- and we are talking about
5 the 1990s as opposed to since 2000 -- if an MI5
6 officer -- and if there is an objection, please say --
7 if a MI5 officer or an MI6 officer felt that what was
8 happening in the United Kingdom or elsewhere was in
9 the interests of the United Kingdom and was subversive,
10 undermining the state or the Monarchy, that might
11 generate discussion about what to do about it, mightn't
12 it, then?
13 A. I think that is possibly the case, yes. I think that is
14 the case, yes.
15 Q. Once again it might range across a number of options.
16 It might not be a car crash in order to murder; it could
17 be a car crash in order to frighten. That is another
18 possibility, another option, isn't it?
19 A. Well, I think that we are getting into speculation.
20 It is a possibility but, you know, it is speculation.
21 At the time in MI6 I think there was not as strict
22 control over their activities as there is now and that
23 is all I can really say on that matter.
24 Q. Very well. What I want to ask you now, turning from
25 that issue -- that is the plan or proposal -- I want to

94

1 ask you about the issue of Henri Paul. Once again, you
2 have been asked about your present recollections in
3 relation to that. I want to summarise it so that you
4 can look at the documents if you wish, but when you were
5 first reflecting on this matter, there were certain
6 features that stood out in your mind and, as
7 I understand it, still do, about the person, whoever
8 it was, that you were reading about in a file.
9 Firstly, he was French; is that right?
10 A. That is correct, yes.
11 Q. Secondly, he worked at the Ritz in Paris; is that right?
12 A. That is correct, yes.
13 Q. Thirdly, perhaps in your case most importantly because
14 of your interests, he had an interest in flying?
15 A. That is correct, yes.
16 Q. Now, looking back, do you have any doubt about those
17 features, even now?
18 A. Now, look, I cannot remember very well at all.
19 I remember having written that. It is fixed very, very
20 strongly in my mind, so it is certainly still fixed very
21 strongly in my mind. I can say that.
22 Q. Now, just in relation to that person, you mentioned
23 today a P file. Assuming nothing has been shredded, if
24 one was trying to locate a file that might have this
25 information, what are the files that one might be

95

1 looking for? Would they be headed in a particular way
2 in the days before computerised files?
3 A. Before computerised files it was an absolute labyrinth
4 of cross-referenced files. A lot of it actually
5 depended upon the fantastic memory of the clerical staff
6 who worked in the filing cabinet system who remembered
7 which files were which and the way they were
8 cross-referenced.
9 Before the days of computers it was a phenomenally
10 difficult thing to try to keep track of all the
11 information that MI6 had on institutions, on people, on
12 operations. Nowadays of course it is all done on
13 computers so it is much easier.
14 Q. Now, what is accepted -- and we have heard quite a lot
15 of evidence here so it is not a problem -- is one would
16 expect the security services to have a relationship with
17 the head of security at a large hotel. So there is
18 nothing controversial in that, is there?
19 A. No. In our training we were -- actually, this is what
20 we were told, the security heads of hotel were people
21 we should try to target on overseas operations because
22 they were very useful people.
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think now might be a convenient
24 time for a break.
25 MR MANSFIELD: We perhaps could have the lunch break.

96

1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: We could have the lunch break.
2 That would be one way of dealing with it. We did start
3 at half past nine this morning. Which would be more
4 convenient from your point of view?
5 MR MANSFIELD: Either, but I think having the lunch break
6 now might be --
7 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Very well. Mr Tomlinson, we are
8 going to break off for the lunch break now and we will
9 resume at 25 minutes to 2. I hope that is not
10 inconvenient for you.
11 A. No, that is okay.
12 (12.35 pm)
13 (The short adjournment)

http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/h ... 0208am.htm


Continuing this afternoon.