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 se
nse 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.
The path that led to this vortex of fear and paranoia began among the peaceful rolling acres of Diana’s childhood home of Althorp in Northamptonshire. It is here in the summer of 1995 that Bashir first met her brother, Earl Spencer, whom he and his colleagues had correctly identified as his sister’s gatekeeper. Gain his confidence and there was a good chance of reaching Diana. At the time the Princess was not the only member of the Spencer family living with the constant fear of phone taps, undercover surveillance and intrusion, either by the media or by other more sinister agencies. Crucially, Charles Spencer was as convinced as his sister that dark forces were at work in the country, and had already felt the need to take robust action to defend himself and his family. A year earlier, in April 1994, in an off-camera conversation with a television producer, Jackie Donaldson, he said that he knew that he was being bugged and who was behind it. His comments came at a time when he was defending both his reputation and his privacy. After a two-year fight he successfully sued the Daily Express in 1996 for a series of articles which suggested he was suspected of having been used to launder the proceeds of a multimillion-pound fraud by his friend and best man, Darius Guppy. Earl Spencer won £50,000 damages and an apology. At the same time, and more significantly in the light of subsequent developments, he took out a High Court injunction against his former head of security, Alan James Waller, forbidding him from disclosing information about his private life and that of members of the royal family. His writ followed the publication, in March 1994, in the now defunct Today newspaper, of a letter he had written to Diana in December 1993 warning her that her public appearances were damaging her popularity, which Waller was suspected of having sold to the paper.
So when the young earl agreed to meet Bashir to discuss his suspicions about the involvement of the security forces, he had his own fears and theories. At the time Bashir was telling colleagues that he had a contact within MI5, the British security service, who was giving him information. By the end of August Bashir had met Charles Spencer at Althorp and told him that it was his understanding that the security services were indeed targeting the Princess. It is unclear what evidence he gave the Earl to underpin this assertion, but Spencer, a former correspondent with NBC television in America and therefore likely to be sceptical, found it persuasive.
In the meantime Bashir’s editor, Steve Hewlett – no doubt having seen other similar Panorama investigations peter out – was concerned by the slow progress and urged Bashir to aim for the stars, or rather the star, and press for an interview with the Princess. At one of several further meetings with the Earl, it seems that Bashir persuaded Charles Spencer to speak to his sister and arrange for Diana to meet Bashir secretly. Presumably he wanted to outline his knowledge about the hidden forces ranged against her face to face.
By now the plausible Mr Bashir had won the endorsement of her brother, which familial vote of confidence would have gone a long way to allay any doubts Diana may have had about Bashir’s motives. An unforeseen by-product of the involvement of Charles in the early stages of this venture was that it helped to reconcile brother and sister after a couple of years of coolness. ‘She was longing to reignite her relationship with her brother,’ asserted members of Diana’s circle, with whom she had discussed in detail what was happening. ‘It meant a lot to her.’
While memories differ regarding the fateful first meeting between the Princess and the TV reporter – one account says it was midsummer, another late September – all their encounters were characterized by secrecy and a theatrical atmosphere of intrigue that served to heighten the tension, and perhaps to bring the Princess and Bashir closer together, the conspiratorial feeling increasing her trust in the young reporter. It was a technique that became Bashir’s trademark. By September 1995 Bashir had built up a considerable rapport with Diana. ‘He’s not had an easy life; I enjoyed talking to him,’ the Princess told her butler after one of their hush-hush meetings. The first furtive encounter took place at a friend’s London apartment, another, like a scene from the movie, All the President’s Men, apparently occurred in an underground car park. Most, however, were at Kensington Palace. Paul Burrell would pick Bashir up from BBC Television Centre in west London and drive him, usually hidden under a green tartan blanket, to Diana’s apartment. ‘This passenger seemed to enjoy the cloak-and-dagger operation more than most,’ he wrote in A Royal Duty.
In the autumn of 1995, soon after she began to see Bashir regularly, the Princess became far more fearful for her safety, her customary suspicions and warnings now suffused by a genuine sense of dread, verging on the paranoid. ‘She was off on her own bat, having had her various insecurities fed by Bashir very cleverly,’ noted her American biographer Sally Bedell Smith. Bashir apparently convinced her that her apartment was bugged, something she had long suspected – she had in fact had it swept for listening devices before, but now she seemed even more anxious than usual, summoning her private secretary to join her in a search of her apartment. He had already noted with concern her heightened state of paranoia, and here was another example of it.
According to Diana’s confidant, who spoke to her during this period, the Princess had been given the information about Tiggy Legge-Bourke and her hospital visits by more than one significant source. That Tiggy had been to hospital several times was shown to be true, but whether Diana jumped or was led to the hurtful conclusion, later proved to be wide of the mark, that the nanny had had an abortion is uncertain. The source of these stories must have been very credible to Diana to lead her to make the extreme and uncharacteristic accusations against Tiggy.
When, that autumn, Diana heard from the lips of Prince Charles’s orderly George Smith the tale of an alleged male rape by a member of the Prince’s staff, she feared that her knowledge of Smith’s claims might be dangerous. All was clearly far from well in the royal households – and then along came Martin Bashir, a credible witness, an outsider but also representative of the media establishment, amplifying and anchoring all the lurid stories she had heard about the shadowy security services. ‘Fear of the security services was one of the emotions driving Diana’s secret cooperation with the film,’ noted a Sunday Times article on the eve of the broadcast. The piece, ‘Diana’s Prime Time Revenge’ by Nicholas Hellen and Tim Rayment, continued, ‘When she learnt that Martin Bashir, the Panorama reporter fronting the project, was investigating the role of MI5 in her long nightmare of tapped telephone calls and tabloid tip-offs, she wanted to know more.’ Bashir’s initial claim that he had a contact inside MI5 who was supplying information that showed she was under surveillance was one thing – now he apparently told her that he had documentary evidence to back his contention in the form of bank statements. Not only did these statements show payments to Earl Spencer’s former head of security, but they also showed payments made by a shadowy offshore company. Could it be that he told the Princess that this company, Penfolds Consultants, was in reality a ‘front’ for a secret-service operation? While exactly what was said is unlikely ever t
o be revealed, it is known that Diana was sufficiently alarmed to discuss the possibility of her leaving the country for a place of safety. As a former Panorama colleague of Bashir’s commented: ‘He is a good operator. If he wanted to give the impression that he was so close to MI5 that he was getting bank statements from them, I would take him seriously.’ Additionally, when the Princess talked about this, she expressed her belief that Prince Charles and the Duchy of Cornwall, his hereditary estate, were in some way involved. Where did she get that idea? In speaking to her circle, the Princess was not specific with details of the role of her husband or those around him. Plainly though, she was extremely concerned, especially in view of the lurid accounts she was now hearing about the goings-on inside the court of Prince Charles. ‘That,’ Diana’s friends said to me, ‘is why the whole thing is so sinister.’
Whatever the tale Bashir told the Princess, it is the firm and forceful contention of Diana’s circle that he did show her bank statements – denied by both Bashir and the BBC – which verified his assertion that he had a source who could obtain such confidential material. What the Princess did not know at the time was that they were forgeries.
In keeping with the undercover nature of the operation, the forging of these bank statements was as clandestine and covert as the filming of the programme. When Matt Wiessler, a graphic designer, was contacted by Bashir in early October 1995 about a ‘rush job’, the impression he got was that Bashir was at the heart of some dark mystery. Wiessler, who was struck by the way Bashir was ‘playing the super detective’, later recalled that, ‘He was very excited and told me that if he got this wrapped up it would make his career.’
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