Diana: In Pursuit of Love (26 page)

On the other hand, it is clear that in the autumn of 1995 she believed that there was a conspiracy to harm her. In the edgy world Diana inhabited, where everyone was suspicious of everyone else and everyone seemed to have something to hide, where her existing suspicions and fears were being fed by plausible outsiders and damaged insiders, she was running scared. As a confidante to whom she spoke regularly about these concerns remarked, ‘She had the capacity for paranoia – who wouldn’t in the situation she was in?’

The Princess was so certain that there was a plot against her life, that the ‘enemy’ was planning to harm her, that she considered fleeing the country. What intelligence had excited and provoked this sense of dread? At this critical period an unknown BBC journalist, Martin Bashir, had entered her life. The lurid stories he apparently told her, together with the documents he showed her, filled her with fear and alarm. It is no exaggeration to say that the day he entered her world, Diana’s life – and legacy – was changed for ever.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

Fakes, Forgeries and Secret Tapes

H
E IS NOW
one of the biggest names in television with a roll call of major interviews, a number of them controversial, to his credit. But when Martin Bashir joined the BBC’s flagship current-affairs programme,
Panorama
, in spring 1992, he was just a very small and unknown fish in a large pond teeming with big names.

Born in 1963, the son of an immigrant family (his parents had moved to Britain from Pakistan), Bashir had the drive to succeed, perhaps to over-achieve, typical of first-generation families. A troubled background – his father suffered from psychiatric problems and his brother died of muscular dystrophy – probably served only to strengthen his resolve, and he graduated with a top degree in English and History from the University of Southampton, even though, as he was fond of saying, the only book in their council home on a south London estate was the rent book. When he joined Panorama, Bashir, a former sports reporter, had a reputation as an ‘obsessional loser’, a Walter Mitty character chasing left-field ideas that rarely came to anything. In the predominantly white, middle-class milieu of the BBC, he was seen as an outsider and a loner. While he was respected as a smooth and clever operator he had, as the journalist Sonia Purnell commented in the
Independent on Sunday
, ‘barely made a name for himself in nine years at the BBC’.

One story is typical of his ingratiating charm, a potent and winning combination of flattery, humility – and make-believe. When he first joined
Panorama
he made a point of buttonholing Tom Mangold, doyen of investigative reporters, in the BBC bar in west London. Deferentially, he approached him and asked to shake the great man’s hand. He went on to tell him that when his brother Tommy was dying, one of his last wishes was that he, Martin, should emulate the veteran reporter whom, it went without saying, he considered to be the best in the world. Mangold, his ego stroked and heart strings pulled in equal measure by this touching story, immediately warmed to the rather lonely and forlorn figure. Mangold became more sceptical about a year later, when he was talking to John Humphrys, the grand inquisitor of Radio Four’s
Today
programme, at a party. Humphrys, it transpired, had had precisely the same conversation with Bashir – and so, at a different time, had the highly respected TV war correspondent, Michael Nicholson. As one BBC insider commented, ‘You’ve got to admire a guy like that. He’s out of Hollywood. It tells you everything you need to know about him.’

Behind the meek exterior was an ambitious journalist who was keen to make a name for himself. His previous two programmes, in 1993 and 1994, about the former England football manager Terry Venables and his financial dealings, had attracted attention as well as a libel writ from Venables who complained, as part of his case, about the use of fabricated financial documents. Bashir, who made the show with a fellow producer, Mark Killick, had, it seems, used the skills of a graphic designer, Matt Wiessler, to recreate material that already existed, but which was not to hand, so that it could be used to illustrate the story.

In mid-1995, while he and Killick were dealing with the fallout from the Venables show, Bashir started to look into the whole idea of the relationship between the security services and the royal family, as well as the apparent ‘dirty tricks’ campaign being waged against the Princess by her enemies inside and outside the Palace. Like many others, he had not taken the soothing words of the Prime Minister and the head of MI5 at face value, and was keen to explore the story further. In 1995, when he began investigating the
story, he was moving into a crowded field – and with few contacts or leads to help him on his way. ‘We had some little insights, nothing of huge significance, but bits and bobs,’ one of his colleagues at the time later recalled. I myself, as someone who was at the time the equivalent of one-stop shopping for Diana stories, had been contacted by numerous reporters, including other BBC journalists, for help on this subterranean issue. For example, a freelance TV company called 20/20, based in north London, had spent weeks investigating the origin of the Squidgygate, Camillagate and other secretly recorded tapes of intimate royal conversations. They had uncovered a seedy world in which thousands of modern-day radio hams spent their spare time scanning the airwaves in the hope of listening in to salacious chatter. Evenings were most popular as it was then that mobile telephone conversations became more intimate as lovers whispered sweet nothings to one another. At the same time the possible involvement of Britain’s security services in taping royal conversations was such an accepted part of national life that a TV play based on the idea had been broadcast. In editorial terms, then, Bashir’s investigation seemed to be an idea past its sell-by date.

And if Bashir had grander ambitions and wanted to snag an interview with the Princess, he was just one TV journalist in a line representing the Who’s Who of the international media. Rarely a week would go by without a big-name TV interviewer, usually American, calling me and asking me to use my influence with the Princess to gain access to her. The naivety of some in respect of royal protocol was breathtaking, and flattering. ‘If we fly Concorde Thursday could you line up the Princess of Wales for Friday,’ the producer for one American household name asked me. ‘And would it be possible to see the Queen Mother on Sunday?’ As the Queen Mother had not been interviewed since 1923, I told them that the prospects were not hopeful. Other media stars, notably Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters, were much more sophisticated and savvy. Oprah considered making and sending the Princess a videotape filmed at her ranch in the Midwest outlining why the people’s Princess should sit on the couch with the queen of confessional TV. Eventually Oprah was invited to Kensington Palace for lunch with the Princess, who was somewhat in awe of the self-possessed and
articulate TV host. Oprah Winfrey was not the only one trying to secure the interview of the decade. Already enamoured of all things American, Diana was now subject to the remorseless charm of Barbara Walters, who also had lunch with the Princess and earned the approval of her private secretary, Patrick Jephson. Discussions about donations to the Princess’s favourite charities – the conventional ploy to snag a royal – were at an advanced stage. Not to be outdone, the CBS network offered the Duchess of York a lucrative contract – provided she could haul Diana into the studio. While the Americans were clearly front runners, in Britain Sir David Frost and Clive James, already a friend of Diana’s, had invested much time trying to set up a chat with the Princess, James even arranging a secret visit for her to see a recording of his chat show.

While Martin Bashir, who was unknown to both the Princess and her circle, wanted to enter the race for the first face-to-face TV interview with Diana, he was in fact further handicapped by the fact that he worked for the BBC. The publicly funded broadcaster generated only negative thoughts in the Princess, who saw the organization as the media arm of Buckingham Palace, as the Establishment in a cathode tube. The fact that the Chairman of the Governors, Marmaduke Hussey, was married to the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, meant that, as far as Diana was concerned, the BBC could not be trusted. Indeed, that consideration had weighed in my favour several years earlier when she was deciding to whom she should tell her story, as she had immediately discounted the BBC because of its formal and personal links with Buckingham Palace. As for the BBC’s current affairs show
Panorama
, that did not even appear on her radar screen. Yet it was an unknown journalist from this flagship show who ultimately scooped the prize.

Without doubt Bashir was plausible and a smooth operator. As his colleagues testify he has an ability, described as ‘genius’ by his former
Panorama
colleagues, to persuade anyone to give him an interview, once he has got his foot in the door. But then there were many others as persuasive as him, and, quite frankly, American television networks, with years of dealing with Hollywood royalty, are much more sophisticated and resourceful when it comes to
bagging the big interviews. When I was writing a biography of Monica Lewinsky I could only stand back and marvel at the slick yet friendly way Barbara Walters persuaded the former intern to grant her the first television interview. Every step of the way Walters had the money, resources and support of the ABC Television network. It was an overwhelming combination. The Princess of Wales would doubtless have had the same treatment. A show like
Panorama
, worthy, serious-minded public television, simply had no chance when it came to snaring the big hitters on the celebrity circuit. It neither was, nor is, part of its agenda. Yet within a few months of first looking at the subject of Diana, the secret services and the royal family, Martin Bashir was sitting with the Princess in the boys’ sitting room at Kensington Palace secretly filming an interview that would change her life for ever. More than that, because of her premature death, it served as the fulcrum of her life. The interview and the bizarre events surrounding it, notably her perceived paranoia about her safety, are now presented as her abiding image and form a substantive part of her historical legacy.

But did Bashir achieve his scoop not only by force of personality, but by persuading Diana that she was being conspired against?

The stories Bashir apparently told the Princess, the documents he showed her, subsequently revealed as forgeries, and the deliberately cloak-and-dagger nature of their meetings and conversations – could they have convinced her that to fight back she would have to speak out publicly? In short, her famous BBC interview might not have been an act of self-indulgence as many, including the Queen and the rest of the royal family, senior courtiers and politicians, believed at the time – but, rather, a deliberate act of self-preservation. In the prevailing mood of instability and disquiet, when everything seemed larger than life, the Princess was truly frightened. The documents and any alarming allegations made by Martin Bashir were all the more disquieting because he was a believable witness, an outsider from an organization at the heart of the British Establishment, with powerful links to every institution in the land, including the monarchy. In the climate of dread he helped create and exploit, she spoke out to pre-empt any attempt to discredit her, or worse, by the dark forces that she now believed
stalked and watched her. She was in actual fear of her life, feeling extremely threatened. Thus the idea of the television programme was to get a message across to the people before, as she now felt, some kind of violent physical action was taken against her. The irony is that after the
Panorama
interview was broadcast, many more people loved her. That, however, had not been her aim. It was, as far as she was concerned, to save her life.

Critical in creating this sense of impending doom was a set of forged bank statements Bashir had made up by a graphic designer friend. They were physical proof of the stories he was spinning, that she was under constant surveillance, and ultimately under threat, from Britain’s secret services. She was shown the documents in October 1995, just before she agreed to give the interview. The appearance of this evidence tipped the balance. Whatever her misgivings beforehand, Diana was determined to go ahead with the interview. It seems certain that there would have been no
Panorama
documentary if she had not been shown these forged documents; indeed, her reaction to the documents, as related to me by those in her circle, was ‘terror and horror’. In years gone by she would have crumpled in the face of the forces ranged against her, but now she felt stronger. As with harassment by paparazzi, she decided to fight – to take the battle to those who wished her harm. None the less, the existence of these documents added to her general sense of ‘They’re out to get me.’ She felt hunted and genuinely in fear of her life.