US intelligence listened to Princess Diana's calls before crash: report

LONDON - US intelligence listened to Princess Diana's telephone calls without British approval on the night she died in a Paris car accident, The Observer said Sunday, citing findings of a long-awaited report.

The surveillance arm of the US government admitted to Lord John Stevens, who led an independent probe that confirms the crash was an accident, that it had listened to her conversations while she stayed at the Ritz Hotel, it said.

It failed to notify MI6, Britain's overseas intelligence agency, the weekly said, adding the issue will raise new questions about trans-Atlantic agreements on intelligence sharing.

Stevens was apparently assured that the 39 classified documents concerning her final conversations did not contain material that might help explain her death, The Observer said.

No explanation for the alleged eavesdropping was given.

Norman Baker, a member of parliament for the opposition Liberal Democrat party, was concerned about the news report when questioned by The Independent on Sunday.

"There have been rumours that Princess Diana was being bugged by the Americans, so I am not entirely surprised," he told the weekly.

"But it is a major constitutional issue. The question is whether the Americans were doing it themselves or the British government had outsourced it to the Americans to achieve deniability."

Diana, 36, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, 42, and their chauffeur Henri Paul, 41, were killed in a car crash in a Paris underpass in the early hours of August 31, 1997. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones survived.

The upshot of Lord Stevens' report, due to be published Thursday, is that the crash occurred because Paul was driving too fast while under the influence of alcohol, The Observer said, refuting theories of a murder plot.

Agence France-Presse

The Brits will be up in arms over this scandal. :biggrin::biggrin: