How I came to write The Decoy
On the morning of 31st August 1997 the world awoke to the numbing news that Diana, Princess of Wales was dead.
At just thirty-six, the most photographed and, arguably, the most loved woman on the planet had been killed, along with her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, in a Paris car crash.
Her death sparked a universal outpouring of grief such as the world had never seen. But while millions mourned, the French authorities hastily concluded that the crash was nothing more than a routine traffic accident caused by the chauffeur being drunk and driving too fast to avoid a chasing pack of paparazzi.
For some, however, that conclusion was reached far too hastily. There were suspicious circumstances surrounding the crash and questions to be answered. In the weeks and months that followed, the controversy spawned a rash of conspiracy theories and the emergence of the largest number of worldwide websites, devoted to debating a single topic, in cyber history.
The quest for truth was led by Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, who pressed relentlessly for a full and transparent investigation. His campaign for justice lasted many years.
In 1999 a French judicial inquiry concluded that the driver of the Princess’s Mercedes - Ritz Hotel acting head of security Henri Paul - was solely to blame because he lost control of the car while intoxicated. In 2006 an investigation, led by Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir John Stevens, came to much the same conclusion. And in April 2008, after a six-month inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, the jury declared that the occupants of the car had been unlawfully killed. Their statement attributed the deaths to “grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles and of the Mercedes” and added that additional factors were “the impairment of the judgement of the driver of the Mercedes through alcohol, the fact that the deceased was not wearing a seat belt and the Mercedes struck a pillar rather than something else”.
So that’s it and all about it. Or is it?
It is well-known that Diana was openly concerned for her own safety. She famously told her lawyer: “…my husband is planning an accident in my car, brake failure and serious head injury…”. And she was widely quoted as saying once: “One day I will go up in a helicopter and it’ll just blow up. MI5 will do away with me”.
Were these just the paranoid ravings of a scorned and embittered woman, or did the princess have legitimate grounds for her fears?
There is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that, right from the moment Diana joined the Royal Family as a fresh-faced teenager, she was a thorn in the side of the British establishment. At first it was simply her ‘normality’ which became an irritant. The public loved her for it but the Royal Family had no direct experience of how their subjects lived their lives from day-to-day and Diana’s behaviour was baffling. To the hidebound Royal household it was disturbing, even threatening. And as she grew in confidence and began to assert herself in Royal Circles the wider Establishment began to fear that she might become a figurehead for modernisation and change – change which offended against their traditional view of the world.
When her relationship with Prince Charles began to crumble, she made herself many powerful enemies by laying bare her innermost feelings and publicly revealing the secrets of her marriage in the devastatingly candid book ‘Diana. Her True Story’. More antagonism was to follow when she gave her notorious interview to the BBC ‘Panorama’ programme in which she expressed the belief that Prince Charles was weak and would never be king. To some observers she “signed her own death warrant” with that performance.
Diana was also convinced that she was being spied on by MI5 and that she was the victim of a dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by the security services. For that reason she went to great lengths to keep secret her contacts with author Andrew Morton who wrote “Diana. Her True Story’ and with Martin Bashir who interviewed her for ‘Panorama’.
Evidence that her concerns in this regard were well founded came in 1992 with the newspaper publication of a telephone conversation between the princess and a boyfriend who referred to her affectionately as “Squidgy”. It emerged that the conversation had taken place on New Year’s Eve 1989 and had been picked up and recorded several days later by a couple of radio hams – clear evidence that the conversation had been eavesdropped, recorded, and then re-broadcast to ensure that it would enter the public domain.
The Queen was furious at this intrusion and ordered MI5 to conduct an internal investigation. After Diana’s death Her Majesty warned the princess’s butler, Paul Burrell, to beware of “Dark Forces”, telling him that “…there are powers at work in this country of which we have no knowledge”.
But the British were not the only ones who were bugging Diana. Al Fayed’s investigations revealed that various American agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency between them held more than a hundred files comprising more than two thousand pages of transcripts of Diana’s telephone conversations.
At the time her worldwide anti-landmine campaign was gaining massive support and it is thought the potential damage to the Americans’ multi-billion dollar defence industry might have been the reason behind the United States’ close monitoring of the princess.
So if there was a conspiracy to harm Diana, to silence her forever, where might the threat have come from? An American Special Forces hit team? An MI5 undercover unit? An MI6 assassination squad? Or a renegade group of Establishment figures loyal to the crown and mistakenly convinced of Diana’s treason?
Conspiracy theorists have always focussed on two characters, with connections to the security services, who came into contact with Diana during the final weeks of her life.
The first is Henri Paul himself. We know that he worked as a paid agent of MI6 – the British Secret Intelligence Service – and there are strong suggestions that he was also an agent of the French equivalent of MI5 – the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire). It is not unusual for the security services of various countries to pay security men at top international hotels to be their eyes and ears and keep them abreast of the comings and goings of politicians, prominent businessmen, arms dealers and other persons of interest.
The second is James Andanson, an internationally renowned photographer, who led the pack of paparazzi which hounded Diana and Dodi throughout their last summer of romance together. Andanson, too, was employed by the DST under the codename of “Le Rabbateur” which translates as “The Beater” in English and there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that he worked for the British and possibly the Americans too. He was a high-profile acquaintance of President Mitterrand and a close friend of several Prime Ministers. Much has been made in the French press of the fact that a number of prominent French celebrities, who apparently committed suicide, were photographed by Andanson shortly before they died. In some cases just hours before. Several conspiracy theories exist concerning the suicide of former Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy who was due to be a key witness in an investigation into a financial scandal engulfing Mitterrand. Andanson was a friend of Beregovoy and photographed him on the day he died. Three years after Diana’s death, just as a new investigation into the Beregovoy affair was due to be launched, Andanson was found dead in a burned out car. The location was 400 kilometres south of his home when he had told his wife that he was going on an assignment in Paris, 150 kilometres to the north of his home. According to his wife there was no indication that her husband was suicidal, no reason to take his own life, and he left no suicide note.
Today, even after the conclusion of the French judicial inquiry, the Scotland Yard investigation, and the London inquest, several questions still remain unanswered:
• Henri Paul had a number of bank accounts into which he paid large amounts far in excess of his Ritz Hotel salary. Who was paying him and what for?
• On the night of the crash Paul left the Ritz at 7 pm and did not return until 10 pm. There are no witnesses as to where he went and whom he met.
• When he died Paul had cash amounting to £2,000 in his pocket. Who gave it to him and why?
• Paul had driven the route from The Ritz to Dodi’s apartment in the Rue Arsene Houssaye on many occasions yet chose to take a longer route despite knowing that the paparazzi were in pursuit. He had been drinking but was not intoxicated enough to be prevented from driving by the two bodyguards so why deviate from the plan?
• Witnesses said that as the Mercedes approached the first exit from the Cours de Reine which would have avoided entering the Alma tunnel where the crash happened, Paul was prevented from taking the slip road by a lone motorcyclist standing astride his bike and blocking the roadway. Who was he? He has never come forward.
• Throughout the afternoon and evening of the fateful day, as Diana and Dodi came and went from the Ritz, two mystery men remained for hours standing and watching on the periphery of the crowd. They were picked up on the hotel security cameras. One wore a baseball cap. They have never been identified and have not come forward despite repeated appeals in the world’s press. Who are they and what were they doing there?
• Just before dawn on the Sunday morning, a few hours after the crash, James Andanson boarded a plane from Paris to Corsica. The inquest heard evidence that he was on an assignment to photograph Gilbert Becaud but why leave Paris when such an historic news event had just happened? Was there another reason for him to visit Corsica?
• The inquest also heard that Andanson’s death had been determined as suicide by a local magistrate. But was it? Could he have been killed to prevent him revealing a damaging secret?
Part of the cover blurb on my book, “The Decoy”, reads as follows: “…on the night she (Diana) died two secret operations – one connected to the British Establishment and one involving major figures in the French government – collided unintentionally with catastrophic results. From Bosnia to Baghdad, from Paris to Washington, from Angola to London this ‘faction’ thriller tells the compelling story of the British, French and American secret services’ involvement in the most iconic car crash in history…and beyond. The names, dates, places and events are real. Only the storyline is fiction. Or is it? As the former head of Scotland Yard’s press bureau, crime correspondent for a Sunday newspaper, and personal adviser to Mohamed Al Fayed, the author has a unique insight. Among the countless conspiracy theories, his is the most plausible account so far. This is a ‘must read’ for all students of the subject”.
At just thirty-six, the most photographed and, arguably, the most loved woman on the planet had been killed, along with her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, in a Paris car crash.
Her death sparked a universal outpouring of grief such as the world had never seen. But while millions mourned, the French authorities hastily concluded that the crash was nothing more than a routine traffic accident caused by the chauffeur being drunk and driving too fast to avoid a chasing pack of paparazzi.
For some, however, that conclusion was reached far too hastily. There were suspicious circumstances surrounding the crash and questions to be answered. In the weeks and months that followed, the controversy spawned a rash of conspiracy theories and the emergence of the largest number of worldwide websites, devoted to debating a single topic, in cyber history.
The quest for truth was led by Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, who pressed relentlessly for a full and transparent investigation. His campaign for justice lasted many years.
In 1999 a French judicial inquiry concluded that the driver of the Princess’s Mercedes - Ritz Hotel acting head of security Henri Paul - was solely to blame because he lost control of the car while intoxicated. In 2006 an investigation, led by Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir John Stevens, came to much the same conclusion. And in April 2008, after a six-month inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, the jury declared that the occupants of the car had been unlawfully killed. Their statement attributed the deaths to “grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles and of the Mercedes” and added that additional factors were “the impairment of the judgement of the driver of the Mercedes through alcohol, the fact that the deceased was not wearing a seat belt and the Mercedes struck a pillar rather than something else”.
So that’s it and all about it. Or is it?
It is well-known that Diana was openly concerned for her own safety. She famously told her lawyer: “…my husband is planning an accident in my car, brake failure and serious head injury…”. And she was widely quoted as saying once: “One day I will go up in a helicopter and it’ll just blow up. MI5 will do away with me”.
Were these just the paranoid ravings of a scorned and embittered woman, or did the princess have legitimate grounds for her fears?
There is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that, right from the moment Diana joined the Royal Family as a fresh-faced teenager, she was a thorn in the side of the British establishment. At first it was simply her ‘normality’ which became an irritant. The public loved her for it but the Royal Family had no direct experience of how their subjects lived their lives from day-to-day and Diana’s behaviour was baffling. To the hidebound Royal household it was disturbing, even threatening. And as she grew in confidence and began to assert herself in Royal Circles the wider Establishment began to fear that she might become a figurehead for modernisation and change – change which offended against their traditional view of the world.
When her relationship with Prince Charles began to crumble, she made herself many powerful enemies by laying bare her innermost feelings and publicly revealing the secrets of her marriage in the devastatingly candid book ‘Diana. Her True Story’. More antagonism was to follow when she gave her notorious interview to the BBC ‘Panorama’ programme in which she expressed the belief that Prince Charles was weak and would never be king. To some observers she “signed her own death warrant” with that performance.
Diana was also convinced that she was being spied on by MI5 and that she was the victim of a dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by the security services. For that reason she went to great lengths to keep secret her contacts with author Andrew Morton who wrote “Diana. Her True Story’ and with Martin Bashir who interviewed her for ‘Panorama’.
Evidence that her concerns in this regard were well founded came in 1992 with the newspaper publication of a telephone conversation between the princess and a boyfriend who referred to her affectionately as “Squidgy”. It emerged that the conversation had taken place on New Year’s Eve 1989 and had been picked up and recorded several days later by a couple of radio hams – clear evidence that the conversation had been eavesdropped, recorded, and then re-broadcast to ensure that it would enter the public domain.
The Queen was furious at this intrusion and ordered MI5 to conduct an internal investigation. After Diana’s death Her Majesty warned the princess’s butler, Paul Burrell, to beware of “Dark Forces”, telling him that “…there are powers at work in this country of which we have no knowledge”.
But the British were not the only ones who were bugging Diana. Al Fayed’s investigations revealed that various American agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency between them held more than a hundred files comprising more than two thousand pages of transcripts of Diana’s telephone conversations.
At the time her worldwide anti-landmine campaign was gaining massive support and it is thought the potential damage to the Americans’ multi-billion dollar defence industry might have been the reason behind the United States’ close monitoring of the princess.
So if there was a conspiracy to harm Diana, to silence her forever, where might the threat have come from? An American Special Forces hit team? An MI5 undercover unit? An MI6 assassination squad? Or a renegade group of Establishment figures loyal to the crown and mistakenly convinced of Diana’s treason?
Conspiracy theorists have always focussed on two characters, with connections to the security services, who came into contact with Diana during the final weeks of her life.
The first is Henri Paul himself. We know that he worked as a paid agent of MI6 – the British Secret Intelligence Service – and there are strong suggestions that he was also an agent of the French equivalent of MI5 – the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire). It is not unusual for the security services of various countries to pay security men at top international hotels to be their eyes and ears and keep them abreast of the comings and goings of politicians, prominent businessmen, arms dealers and other persons of interest.
The second is James Andanson, an internationally renowned photographer, who led the pack of paparazzi which hounded Diana and Dodi throughout their last summer of romance together. Andanson, too, was employed by the DST under the codename of “Le Rabbateur” which translates as “The Beater” in English and there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that he worked for the British and possibly the Americans too. He was a high-profile acquaintance of President Mitterrand and a close friend of several Prime Ministers. Much has been made in the French press of the fact that a number of prominent French celebrities, who apparently committed suicide, were photographed by Andanson shortly before they died. In some cases just hours before. Several conspiracy theories exist concerning the suicide of former Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy who was due to be a key witness in an investigation into a financial scandal engulfing Mitterrand. Andanson was a friend of Beregovoy and photographed him on the day he died. Three years after Diana’s death, just as a new investigation into the Beregovoy affair was due to be launched, Andanson was found dead in a burned out car. The location was 400 kilometres south of his home when he had told his wife that he was going on an assignment in Paris, 150 kilometres to the north of his home. According to his wife there was no indication that her husband was suicidal, no reason to take his own life, and he left no suicide note.
Today, even after the conclusion of the French judicial inquiry, the Scotland Yard investigation, and the London inquest, several questions still remain unanswered:
• Henri Paul had a number of bank accounts into which he paid large amounts far in excess of his Ritz Hotel salary. Who was paying him and what for?
• On the night of the crash Paul left the Ritz at 7 pm and did not return until 10 pm. There are no witnesses as to where he went and whom he met.
• When he died Paul had cash amounting to £2,000 in his pocket. Who gave it to him and why?
• Paul had driven the route from The Ritz to Dodi’s apartment in the Rue Arsene Houssaye on many occasions yet chose to take a longer route despite knowing that the paparazzi were in pursuit. He had been drinking but was not intoxicated enough to be prevented from driving by the two bodyguards so why deviate from the plan?
• Witnesses said that as the Mercedes approached the first exit from the Cours de Reine which would have avoided entering the Alma tunnel where the crash happened, Paul was prevented from taking the slip road by a lone motorcyclist standing astride his bike and blocking the roadway. Who was he? He has never come forward.
• Throughout the afternoon and evening of the fateful day, as Diana and Dodi came and went from the Ritz, two mystery men remained for hours standing and watching on the periphery of the crowd. They were picked up on the hotel security cameras. One wore a baseball cap. They have never been identified and have not come forward despite repeated appeals in the world’s press. Who are they and what were they doing there?
• Just before dawn on the Sunday morning, a few hours after the crash, James Andanson boarded a plane from Paris to Corsica. The inquest heard evidence that he was on an assignment to photograph Gilbert Becaud but why leave Paris when such an historic news event had just happened? Was there another reason for him to visit Corsica?
• The inquest also heard that Andanson’s death had been determined as suicide by a local magistrate. But was it? Could he have been killed to prevent him revealing a damaging secret?
Part of the cover blurb on my book, “The Decoy”, reads as follows: “…on the night she (Diana) died two secret operations – one connected to the British Establishment and one involving major figures in the French government – collided unintentionally with catastrophic results. From Bosnia to Baghdad, from Paris to Washington, from Angola to London this ‘faction’ thriller tells the compelling story of the British, French and American secret services’ involvement in the most iconic car crash in history…and beyond. The names, dates, places and events are real. Only the storyline is fiction. Or is it? As the former head of Scotland Yard’s press bureau, crime correspondent for a Sunday newspaper, and personal adviser to Mohamed Al Fayed, the author has a unique insight. Among the countless conspiracy theories, his is the most plausible account so far. This is a ‘must read’ for all students of the subject”.
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