Lest We Forget. Was Sir Nicholas Soames Right? Could A Landmines Ban Get Diana Killed?

[Tony Gosling]

02Jun20 - Paris London Connection The Assassination of Princess Diana by John Morgan   https://www.bilderberg.org/sis.htm#morgan

Extracts from
Paris London Connection
The Assassination of Princess Diana
by John Morgan (2012)
Shining Bright Publishing
ISBN 978-0-9807407-5-2

A Threatening Phone Call From Sir Nicholas Soames

P 38 PARIS-LONDON CONNECTION

Then during the following month - February 1997 - Diana received a threatening phone call at her home in Kensington Palace. Her friend Simone Simmons was there:

"I was with Diana in her sitting-room at KP when she beckoned me over and held her large old-fashioned black telephone away from her ear so that I could hear. I heard a voice telling her she should stop meddling with things she didn't understand or know anything about, and spent several minutes trying to tell her to drop her [anti-landmines] campaign. Diana didn't say much, she just listened, and I clearly heard the warning: 'You never know when an accident is going to happen.' [Diana] went very pale.

The moment she put the phone down we started talking about what he had said. I tried to be reassuring which was not easy - she was clearly very worried ....

"When 1 listened into her conversation, with its apparent warning ... I was not sure [of her safety] any more. The conversation frightened Diana, and it certainly scared me."

Diana told Simmons that the caller was the Minister of the Armed Forces and close long-time friend of Prince Charles, Nicholas Soames - the same person who just 14 months earlier had accused Diana on national TV of being in "the advanced stages of paranoia".

Diana was not deterred and said to Simmons: "It doesn't matter what happens to me. We must do something. We cannot allow this slaughter to continue."

Then following the Soames phone call, Diana sought out a way of secretly recording her story. On March 7 a former BBC cameraman met with Diana at Kensington Palace and recorded the first of 7 videos. By the time the recordings were complete - later in March - there was 12 hours of footage. She addressed her 17 years of mistreatment at the hands of the royal family and also problems within the family, including her concerns regarding the relationship between Prince Charles and his senior valet, Michael Fawcett.

 

Was Soames Right? Could A Landmines Ban Get You Killed?

P 39 PARIS-LONDON CONNECTION

Princess Diana spent months building up an anti-landmine dossier, made up of sourced information and her own handwritten notes. As a precaution she kept it in her friend Elsa Bowkers locked safe. Then in June - after the dossier had grown to be several inches thick - Diana took a copy of it, which she gave to Simmons for safe-keeping. Simmons hid "it at the head of [her] bed underneath the mattress".

On 1 May 1997 Tony Blair was installed as UK Prime Minister following a landslide election result in favour of New Labour. With that, Nicholas Soames' party lost power and Britain resolved to sign the upcoming anti-landmine treaty.

Diana delivered a landmark anti-Iandmine speech at the Royal Geographic Society in London on June 12. It was entitled: "Responding to Landmines: A Modern Tragedy and Its Consequences". This was to be Diana's final major address against the proliferation of landmines.

She said:

"The world is too little aware of the waste of life, limb and land which anti-personnel landmines are causing among some of the poorest people on earth ....

"For the mine is a stealthy killer. Long after conflict is ended, its innocent victims die or are wounded singly, in countries of which we hear little. Their lonely fate is never reported. The world, with its many other preoccupations, remains largely unmoved by a death roll of something like 800 people every month - many of them women and children. Those who are not killed outright - and they number another 1,200 a month suffer terrible injuries and are handicapped for life.

"I was in Angola in January with the British Red Cross .... Some people chose to interpret my visit as a political statement. But it was not. I am not a political figure. As I said at the time, and I'd like to reiterate now, my interests are humanitarian. That is why I felt drawn to this human tragedy. This is why I wanted to play down my part in working towards a world-wide ban on these weapons ....

"The human pain that has to be borne is often beyond imagining. '" That is something to which the world should urgently turn its conscience.

"In Angola, one in every 334 members of the population is an amputee. Angola has the highest rate of amputees in the world.

How can countries which manufacture and trade in these weapons square their conscience with such human devastation? ..

"Much ingenuity has gone into making some of these mines.

Many are designed to trap an unwary de-miner. ... 1 reflected, after my visit to Angola, if some of the technical skills used in making mines had been applied to better methods of removing them ....

"These mines inflict most of their casualties on people who are trying to meet the elementary needs of life. They strike the wife, or the grandmother, gathering firewood for cooking. They ambush the child sent to collect water for the family ....

"One of the main conclusions 1 reached after this experience: Even if the world decided tomorrow to ban these weapons. this terrible legacy of mines already in the earth would continue to plague the poor nations of the globe. 'The evil that men do, lives after them.'

"And so. it seems to me, there rests a certain obligation upon the rest of us.

"One of my objectives in visiting Angola was to forward the cause of those. like the Red Cross, striving in the name of humanity to secure an international ban on these weapons. Since then. we are glad to see. some real progress has been made. There are signs of a change of heart - at least in some parts of the world. For that we should be cautiously grateful. If an international ban on mines can be secured it means. looking far ahead. that the world may be a safer place for this generation's grandchildren.

"But for this generation in much of the developing world. there will be no relief, no relaxation. The toll of deaths and injuries caused by mines already there, will continue ....

"1 would like to see more done for those living in this 'no man's land'. which lies between the wrongs of yesterday and the urgent needs of today.

"'I think we owe it. I also think it would be of benefit to us. as well as to them. The more expeditiously we can end this plague on Earth caused by the landmine. the more readily can we set about the constructive tasks to which so many give their hand in the cause of humanity."

Just nine days earlier, on Tuesday June 3, Diana had attended an English National Ballet (ENB) performance of Swan Lake at the Royal Albert Hall. This was to be her last visit to the Hall and she was present in her role as ENB patron. At the gala dinner held in the Churchill Hotel following the ballet, Diana was seated next to long-time family friend, Mohamed Al Fayed and his wife, Heini.

During the dinner conversation they discussed the upcoming summer holidays. Diana said she was still working out where to take William and Harry. Mohamed and Heini invited Diana and the boys to join them at their St Tropez villa in July.

Six days later, on Monday the 9th, Diana phoned Michael Cole, Harrods Director of Public Affairs, to find out more detail about the facilities. Then on the Wednesday Diana penned a letter to Mohamed:

"Dear Mohamed, A very special thank you indeed for inviting the boys and I to stay in France next month. Needless to say we are greatly looking forward to it all and we are so grateful to you for giving us this opportunity .... I know we will speak soon, but until then, my love to you all, Diana."

Then on the next day, June 12, Diana delivered the significant anti-landmine speech in London - "how can countries which manufacture and trade in these weapons square their conscience"; "the evil that men do"; "this plague on earth caused by the landmine".

In two short days Princess Diana - who was under the constant surveillance of the British security services - had delivered two powerful messages.

First: to the British Establishment, including the royal family. Second: to the leading arms dealing nations of the western world - the US, UK and France.

On Thursday 12 June 1997 Princess Diana effectively declared war on the armaments industries of the US, UK and France - for even though Britain and France were to sign the Ottawa treaty to ban landmines, it was apparent that Diana would not have stopped at landmines: "my interests are humanitarian - that is why I felt drawn to this human tragedy". As a humanitarian, Diana - after succeeding against landmines - would have sought an end to cluster bombs and other evil - "the evil that men do" - weapons.

 

Diana Prepares To ‘Shack Up’ With Dodi

P 52 PARIS-LONDON CONNECTION

By the end of this period - before August 15 - Diana and Dodi had plans to live together, and were making preparations to move into Julie Andrews' former Malibu home. They also intended to purchase a property in Paris, where they would live part-time.

On Friday August 15 Diana and Rosa Monckton left London on an Al Fayed jet, headed to Athens. This was the start of the Greek Island cruise, which had been organised by Rosa at the end of June.

After arriving in Greece, Diana and Rosa boarded the Della Grazia, a 22 metre yacht with three crew, which had been chartered by MI6. This vessel was tracked by three much larger super yachts - also chartered by MI6 - the Marala. 59 metres; the Sunrise, 90 metres; and the Sea Sedan. 55 metres. These super yachts provided security, but also cruised about acting as media decoys.

While Diana and Rosa drifted around the Aegean Sea for five days in the smallish Della Grazia, the world's media searched doggedly for the princess. MI6 were so keen to protect Diana's location that they arranged for a decoy article to be published in London, stating that "the two were staying on the remote island of Inousses" - across the other side of the Aegean. But when reporters, including Greek journalists, flocked to that island, Diana was nowhere to be seen and there was also no evidence she had been there.

This gave Rosa five days of peace and quiet alone with Diana - time to cover plenty of territory on plans and intentions and to seek any other intelligence that was relevant for her spy-masters.

Meanwhile Dodi was making arrangements for the next cruise with Diana and on August 18 made a critical call to Frank Klein, president of the Ritz Hotel, Paris. Klein recalled later: Dodi told "me that he intended to come to Paris at the end of the month" accompanied by his "friend", Diana.

US intelligence - NSA, which was monitoring the couple's phone conversations - was then made aware that Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed would be visiting Paris around the end of August. Not only that, but it would have been evident that there would be trips between the Ritz Hotel - an AI Fayed asset - and Dodi’s Paris apartment. During the late July weekend when Diana and Dodi had stayed in Paris, both the apartment and hotel had been visited and there had been trips back and forth.

After Frank Klein received the August 18 Dodi communication, his first call was to the Ritz Paris, to his second in command, Claude Roulet. Klein expected to continue his holiday in Antibes beyond the end of the month - it therefore became Roulet's responsibility to ensure the hotel and staff were readied for the anticipated arrival of the VIPs. Roulet passed on the information to his Ritz security head, Henri Paul, but also notified his intelligence handler. This confirmed the news the agencies had already received, courtesy of the NSA surveillance operation.

From this point on, MI6 - working in conjunction with the CIA and the French intelligence agency, DGSE - set about planning to carry out one of the most significant events of the 20th century, the assassination of Princess Diana.

 

MI6 Begin To Plan Princess Diana’s Assassination

P 53 PARIS-LONDON CONNECTION

It was under a month since MI6 had received the nod from senior royals - and now an opportunity to accomplish an extremely deniable operation had opened up. Very close to the chauffeur's route between the Ritz Hotel and Dodi Fayed's apartment lay the Alma Tunnel - a potentially dangerous traffic spot when negotiated at speed. All it required was to prevent the target vehicle, travelling down the riverside expressway, from exiting after the Alexandre III tunnel and it would then be forced into the Alma. With a plan to remove any back-up car, add chasing powerful motorbikes, a strobe light and a waiting vehicle, MI6 began to formulate how this operation could be brought about.

Within hours the top MI6 officer in France, Eugene Curley, received instructions that he was to be heavily involved in orchestrating the assassination of the extremely popular princess. He baulked at this and, despite his 16 years of loyalty in the organisation, refused to participate.

Curley had to be replaced and quickly. Sherard Cowper-Coles, with 20 years' experience, had recently completed the handover of Hong Kong back to the Chinese. He was still based at MI6 headquarters in London. MI6 Chief David Spedding immediately transferred Cowper-Coles into Paris as the replacement head of France. He pulled Curley back into London and a deal was made - Curley could stay in MI6 so long as he would testify on oath to any later investigation that he was still France's MI6 head at the time of the assassination.

Soon after arriving in Paris, Cowper-Coles, comprehending the complexity of the operation, called for more staff.

[These included Valerie Caton, David Spedding and Richard Spearman. Cowper Coles had a team of at least eight MI6 officers in the Paris embasst most of which would not have known the precise goal of the operation.]

 

The Crash: Diana scores 14/15 on Glasgow Trauma Rating scale

P 98 PARIS-LONDON CONNECTION

SAMU had received notification of the crash by 12.25. Dr Arnaud Derossi was on duty as the medical dispatcher and he took the calls.

A SAMU ambulance with Dr Jean-Marc Martino aboard left at 12.28 a.m. - two minutes before the Fire Service ambulances – but didn't arrive until 12.40 - eight minutes after the Fire Service. The ambulance left from the Necker Hospital which was just 2.3 km from the Alma Tunnel. It took 12 minutes to travel 2.3 km - an average speed of 11.5 km/h (7 mph). Martino appears to have stopped on the way to receive final instructions from his MI6 handler, because Diana had survived.

One of MI6's key strategies was to delay treatment. Mailliez had expertise but no equipment. The Fire Service had the equipment but was under orders to not send a doctor ahead of SAMU - and to wait until SAMU arrived before administering any treatment to Diana. SAMU delayed their arrival until 12.40 a.m., 17 minutes after the crash.

All this meant that nothing much was done - including no blood pressure test - for Diana until Dr Martino arrived at 12.40 a.m. And Dr Martino was working for MI6, so he also made sure very little was done - in fact Martino's actions were mostly detrimental to Diana's condition. Martino did not treat Diana - he mistreated her.

MI6 had complete control of the medical treatment of Princess Diana, right from 12.25 a.m. when Frederic Mailliez arrived in the Alma Tunnel, until 2.06 a.m. - when Martino delivered her to the hospital.

On arrival, at 12.40, Martino's team started working with Trevor Rees-Jones, who was assessed as being in the most critical condition. Martino told investigators in 1998: "I asked my crew to take care of the front right hand seat passenger [Rees-Jones], who seemed the more seriously injured of the two, whilst calling for back up from the Mobile Emergency Service [SAMU] in order to attend to the second victim [Diana]."

This decision might sound logical, but it had the effect of further delaying Diana's treatment.

Then at 12.43 the Fire Service's Dr Fuilla arrived. The logical move then would have been for Fuilla's team to treat Diana - because Martino was already working with Rees-Jones.

But that is not what occurred. Instead, Martino's team from working on Rees-Jones to Diana - and Fuilla took over the treatment of Rees-Jones.

These decisions enabled Diana's treatment to be delayed another three minutes, whilst Martino - and MI6 officers - were able to still maintain complete control over Diana's treatment.

Xavier Gourmelon, a first aid instructor with the Fire Service, told police that Diana said:

"My God, what's happened?"

According to the SAMU ambulance report Diana scored 14 out of 15 on the Glasgow Coma Rating Scale. Tom Treasure, the inquest cardio-thoracic expert, later said:

"14 out of 15 is very good .... It is a scale of prediction of head injury and it was very favourable."

This is further medical evidence contradicting Mailliez's account that Diana was unconscious.

It was however obvious to the medical people attending the crash scene that Diana had been involved in a very serious high-speed crash impact - and hadn't been wearing a seat belt.

Dr Mailliez later said: "I was just suspecting a brain damage or a chest damage because of the high-energy accident." Dr Martino also made an early assessment: "Because of what happened at the scene, that is to say a high-speed accident, the technical wherewithal capable of operating in thoracic, cardiac and abdominal regions was needed."

In other words, it was evident from the beginning that, although Diana looked okay on the outside, there would be some internal damage from having been involved in this violent crash.

This then meant that Martino understood Diana required treatment in a hospital - a place with "the technical wherewithal capable of operating" .

From that point on - soon after arriving at 12.40 - Martino, had he been interested in saving Diana, would have been trying to get her to a hospital as soon as possible. Yet that is not what occurred - Diana didn't arrive at La Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital until 2.06 a.m.

It took Martino 1 hour 26 minutes to deliver her to a hospital. Then she died six minutes after arriving.  

It is a shocking story.

Dr Arnaud Derossi, who was operating the phones at SAMU base,  took the initial notification calls and dispatched Martino's ambulance to the scene. He also operated as an MI6 agent on the night. Derossi's SAMU colleague, Dr Marc Lejay, was asleep at the time of the crash. He was not involved with MI6. .

Derossi woke Lejay, who then took over as medical dispatcher - and Derossi left SAMU control in his car at 12.42, arriving at the crash scene eight minutes later, at 12.50. Just like Martino, he also probably spoke with his MI6 handler along the way.

At 12.43 Martino called Lejay with a situation report: "Rear passenger, would seem an arm, the right arm, completely turned backwards. We are trying to sedate and initial treatment. Over." That rear passenger was Princess Diana.

Martino, however, later told French investigators that his initial assessment was much more than that: "She herself had a facial injury, frontal according to the journey log, and was trapped with her right arm bent to the rear, at first glance possibly with a fracture in the upper third. However, she may have had all sorts of other internal injuries, abdominal or thoracic, which might decompensate at any time."

The idea behind calling base with assessments is so the receiving hospital can be chosen and preparations made to have the right staff - doctors and specialists - available on arrival. This is particularly the case for a VIP, as Princess Diana was.

Or Martino failed to inform the base of his initial assessment that Diana had a facial injury and could be expected to have "internal injuries, abdominal or thoracic". Instead he lied, and only told Lejay about a likely arm injury.

He mentioned an injured arm but omitted potentially life-threatening internal injuries.

This was good news for the SAMU base. They had a crash involving a British princess on their hands, but the only injury was to her arm.

It meant there was no need to rush Diana to hospital and there was no expected requirement to have any particular specialists on hand.

But even more important, it reduced the pressure on Martino - it meant he would not have the base breathing down his neck and it strengthened his independent control of the scene. SAMU were in charge of Diana and Martino was their doctor on the spot. And Dr Derossi was on his way. Both were agents of MI6.

It is no coincidence that Martino’s "injured arm" report is sent in just after Derossi had left. It is unusual for a dispatcher to go to the scene and if it had been "known" that Diana only had an injured arm his trip would have seemed unnecessary. Derossi would have notified Martino he had already left before Martino called in with the report. Martino would need Derossi at the crash scene.

Martino left Diana in the back of the Mercedes for another 17 minutes, removing her at 1 a.m. and she was in the ambulance by 1.06. But by that time Martino had her anaesthetised, intubated and ventilated.

A patient is much easier to control if they are unconscious and unable to talk. intubation and ventilation is an extreme process. It involved placing a flexible plastic tube down Diana's windpipe. For this to occur, Diana had to be anaesthetised. These procedures are only carried out prior to hospital if it is absolutely necessary.

In Diana's case it was not.

After Marc Lejay was told about this treatment at 1.19 a.m. he said to Derossi that it "was rather strong for the circumstances". The inquest expert, Professor Tom Treasure, said that in the UK ambulance crews don't intubate unless the person is so incapacitated that it can be done without the use of drugs. He also stated that anaesthetising the patient makes them "much harder to analyse in terms of their brain injury and so on".

So it is a last resort.

Diana was not a last resort patient. She had a Glasgow coma rating  of 14 out of 15 and was not having trouble with breathing.

On arrival at 12.50 Derossi joined Martino's ambulance crew, bringing the number on board to five - Jean-Marc Martino, Arnaud Derossi, Barbara Kapfer, a person called "Fadi", and the driver, Michel Massebeuf. The inquest jury were only informed of three - Martino, Massebeuf and an unnamed "medical student".

Once inside his ambulance Martino undressed and examined the now unconscious Diana.

The first page of the ambulance report reveals the results of that examination under the heading "Findings". Right arm and right leg injuries are mentioned and also "thoracic trauma".

So by 1.15 a.m. Martino is aware that Diana has a thoracic trauma and by his own later admission to the medical investigators that indicates an "internal injury" in that area. This in turn confirmed the requirement to get Diana to a place with, in his words, "the technical wherewithal capable of operating in thoracic" - a hospital.

But that is not what occurred. In fact, the opposite occurred.

At 1.19 Dr Derossi, who is now in the ambulance, phoned through a report to Dr Lejay. He told Lejay two critical lies. He said Diana had "obvious cranial trauma" and he also stated, "at first appearance nothing to report for the thorax". And then Derossi repeated "nothing for the thorax" later in the conversation.

Martino's examination revealed the area where a life-threatening internal injury could lie - the thorax - yet Derossi told Lejay "nothing for the thorax" twice. But also said, "obvious cranial trauma" - something which is not in the record of Martino' s examination.

The effect of this information for Lejay would be that when calling the hospital he would definitely not be asking for a cardio-thoracic specialist to be on hand, but instead would be seeking the presence of a head trauma specialist.

Martino also wrote that Diana's blood pressure had dropped but failed to record the level. Derossi told the base that it was 70. When Lejay heard this, he suggested the low blood pressure might be due to the sedatives Martino had administered - Lejay described them as "a bit violent" for the circumstances. Martino had administered Fentanyl, which is over 80 times more powerful than morphine.

During later cross-examination at the inquest, Martino admitted that 70 is not actually that low. He was asked: "What is your definition of 'stability'" at a crash scene? Martino answered: "Blood pressure between 60 and - a minimum of 70 to 80 units of arterial blood pressure" .

Now in the ambulance, Martino proceeded to use the "low" blood pressure as a pretext to start pumping catecholamines into Diana's system - right from about 1.10 through to 2.06 a.m., when she was delivered to the hospital.

The effect of catecholamine is that it increases the blood pressure, but it also increases the pressure on any potential internal injury. So it should only be administered if absolutely necessary.

In Diana's case catecholamine was not necessary because her blood pressure was not that low, but even more important, the thoracic trauma had revealed the likelihood of an internal chest injury. This meant that the application of catecholamines could be detrimental to Diana's condition.

And Dr Martino - being a doctor - would have definitely been aware of that.

At the inquest, expert Tom Treasure criticised Martino's actions: "Struggling to get a perfect pulse and blood pressure may be wrong; you want one that is just good enough ..... The [catecholamines] being counterproductive, they are flogging the heart, they are tightening the circulation. But the real problem is the hole in the blood vessel and, if anything, you are making ... things worse."

Diana had a critical torn vein and the thoracic trauma should have told Martino that such an internal injury was likely.

By pouring in catecholamines Martino was ensuring that any internal injury would be made worse and in turn would help bring on Diana's death.

Dr Martino told the inquest that a blood pressure of 70 and a pulse of 100 - which Diana had at 1.10 - was stable. Yet he failed to move the ambulance out of the tunnel until 1041 - 31 minutes later.

During the 1.19 report Lejay, at the base, asked whether the ambulance was "ready to roll". He was told by Derossi that it would leave in "a few minutes". Then 10 minutes later, at 1.29 a.m., Lejay calls the ambulance and asks if they are "en route yet". This is even though Lejay was unaware of the thoracic trauma. Had he been told about that, he would have been even more keen for the ambulance to get to the hospital quickly.

A key French defence is that things are done differently there - that ambulances linger longer at the scene: it is called "stay and play". That is true, to a point. But the questions from Lejay, wanting the ambulance to get moving, and the obvious fact that Diana's condition required early hospitalisation, overwhelm any stay and play argument. The requirement for hospitalisation was even admitted by Martino in his early assessment to the French investigators.

Drs Martino and Derossi deliberately lingered as long as they could in the Alma Tunnel, while they simultaneously pumped catecholamines into Diana, knowing that was harmful to her. And they also withheld knowledge of a thoracic trauma from the SAMU base.

The ambulance finally trundled out of the tunnel at 1041 a.m., followed by two French journalists - Pierre Suu and Thierry Orban.

It was 1 hour and 18 minutes since the crash.

 

The Murder of Princess Diana?

P 104 PARIS-LONDON CONNECTION

There were six people on board - Princess Diana, Jean-Marc Martino, Barbara Kapfer, and "Fadi" were in the back and Arnaud Derossi and driver, Michel Massebeuf, were in the front.

The destination hospital was La Pitié Salpêtrière.

Normally the procedure was for the SAMU base to determine the hospital. That did not happen in this case. Instead, during the 1.19 call, Derossi specifically told Lejay to book Diana in to "the neurosurgical unit at the Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital". The reason Derossi did this was apparently because he had been told there was no cardio-thoracic specialist on duty there that night.

There was a hospital where VIPs and political leaders were normally sent to, which did have all the specialists on duty 24 hours for emergencies. That was the Val de Grace. It was just 4.6 km from the crash scene, whereas La Pitié was 5.7 km. In the early edition of The People published on the day of the crash, it said that Diana was "believed to be in the French VIP Val de Grace hospital in central Paris".

That was the logical hospital.

A French emergency physician was later quoted: "Every political figure who is in a car crash or is injured is taken there .... The Val de Grace ... has a top team of trauma specialists on duty around the clock. I might have helicoptered her in. She would have been on the operating block a few minutes after being stabilised."

But it was not in the MI6 plan for Diana to be properly treated for her injuries - in fact, the plan was that she wouldn't survive that night - and part of that was sending her to the wrong hospital.

Pierre Suu, who followed the ambulance from the tunnel, said it was "being driven at walking pace". The ambulance travelled at an average speed of 17 kph (11 mph) then at 2 a.m. was seen to stop for five minutes within 500 metres of the hospital.

Suu later told the police that "a doctor jumped out of the passenger side of the vehicle and rushed round the back of the ambulance and got inside". That doctor was Arnaud Derossi.

Thierry Orban, who was near Suu, said the ambulance "was rocking".

Martino said he stopped the ambulance because Diana's blood pressure had dropped and he "increased the quantity of the drip volume". He specifically told the police: "I did not do any cardiac massage at that moment".

Martino has never said what level Diana's blood pressure fell to. His explanation for the stoppage of the ambulance does not account for Derossi's sudden move from the front to the back, or the rocking ambulance.

It seems likely that some procedure was carried out during the five minute stoppage that helped quicken Diana's death.

The ambulance started moving again at 2.05 and arrived at the hospital at 2.06.

There was no cardio-thoracic specialist on hand. Instead, he was asleep at home. Dr Alain Pavie, the cardio-thoracic specialist, was phoned at 2.1 0 a.m., four minutes after Diana arrived.

Two minutes later Diana stopped breathing on the operating table. She never regained her breath.

Princess Diana passed away six minutes after being delivered to hospital - and two minutes after the cardio-thoracic specialist had been called.

It was 2.12 a.m.

The La Pitie medical team, led by Dr Bruno Riou, did the best they could, but in the circumstances they had no chance of saving Diana.

That is because the actions of Drs Martino and Derossi had already sealed her fate. Effectively those two doctors had assassinated Princess Diana in the back of their ambulance, on the orders of their MI6 handlers. They would have been generously remunerated for their actions.

Riou and his team worked feverishly away for a further two hours in a desperate but hopeless attempt to save a princess who was already dead.

They officially gave up at 4 a.m. - 3 hours and 37 minutes after the crash in the Alma Tunnel.

 

Princess Diana Crash: The Dr Jean-Marc Martino Ambulance Timeline

00:23 – Sunday 31st August 1997  – Di and Dodi's Mercedes S280 Crashes In The Alma Tunnel

12:28 – Dr Jean-Marc Martino’s SAMU Ambulance Leaves The Necker Hospital

00:40 – Dr Jean-Marc Martino’s SAMU Ambulance Arrives In The Alma Tunnel

01:41 – Dr Jean-Marc Martino’s SAMU Ambulance Leaves The Tunnel With Diana

02:00 – The Ambulance Stops Inexplicably, Begins ‘Rocking From Side To Side’

02:05 – Dr Jean-Marc Martino’s SAMU Ambulance Restarts

02:06 – Martino’s Ambulance Arrives At La Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital

02:12 – Princess Diana Takes Her Final Breath

 

---

Tomlinson: The spy who was left out in the cold

Belfast Telegraph, United Kingdom - Sep 4, 2006

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ news/features/story.jsp?story=705124

Since being sacked by MI6, Richard Tomlinson has waged war on his former spymasters, allegedly outing key agents on the net. Now they're exacting harsh revenge for his treachery, as Andrew Mueller discovers.

It is difficult not to suspect a whiff of self-parody in Richard Tomlinson's choice of interview location. He waves from a gleaming white speedboat, moored amid dozens of millionaires' runabouts on an Antibes pier. It's precisely the sort of setting from which the most famous veteran of Tomlinson's former employers, MI6, might have roared off to battle a bald, cat-stroking megalomaniac in his hollowed-out volcano lair, prior to seducing some improbably named heroine as the closing credits rolled. Tomlinson, however, is not commandeering this vessel on Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service. He's keeping an eye on it for the Antibes yacht brokerage firm he now works for.

"I have a pretty nice life down here," he says. "But do I miss the Service? Yeah, I do. It's very interesting, with tremendous security, lots of investment in training, good fun, and you get a fantastic index-linked pension when you're 55 - you retire on virtually your full salary when you're still young enough to buy a boat and sail around the world. It's a brilliant deal really."

Tomlinson, 43, was sacked by MI6 in 1995. The reasons, he claims, were never made clear. Possibly, he allows, it was one of those unfathomable quirks of office politics. Maybe someone, somewhere, just didn't like the cut of his jib.

Getting straightforward answers out of any bureaucracy in such circumstances can be a chore. Prising truth from an organisation as secretive as MI6 is a task that most people would glumly admit was impossible. Tomlinson has now spent more than a decade repeatedly tilting at this particular windmill, with the result that he has spent various portions of his post-MI6 life on the run, under arrest, in court, in prison, and now in exile - but not out of the reach of Britain's police forces and security services.

On 27 June, 2006, French police, acting on a British warrant and with officers of the Metropolitan Police present, raided Tomlinson's home. The French police took Tomlinson's main computer, his laptop, a friend's laptop, his Psion organiser, his cameras, and his New Zealand passport (as a Kiwi-born dual citizen, Tomlinson was permitted to keep his British passport, at the insistence, he says, of French authorities).

The British police, says Tomlinson, still have all these items in their possession, and won't give them back. Scotland Yard, pressed for a comment, are not, as they put it, "prepared to discuss individuals in terms of property that may or may not have been seized". They do confirm that Special Branch is looking into "unauthorised disclosure of information in breach of the Official Secrets Act", and that searches in France have taken place. These searches, says the Met, are part of an investigation into "the publication of specific information on the internet".

On 24 April, 2006, the 11th anniversary of his dismissal, Tomlinson started the "Tomlinson vs MI6" blog. Every year on that date, he explains, he has been in the habit of writing to MI6 seeking a meeting, a discussion, an explanation for his dismissal. Despondently concluding that MI6 is no more likely to reply this year than any other, Tomlinson went public.

"I don't know why they are worried about it," he says. "It's just a silly little blog. Even if I wanted to put anything secret up there, I've been out of MI6 for 11 years. I have nothing I could say that's secret.

"When I started [the blog], I was a bit antagonistic, I suppose. There are plenty of things to feel annoyed about with MI6, particularly the way they got us into the war in Iraq. The names I called [MI6 chief ] John Scarlett were probably a bit excessive."

"I've been having problems with MI6 for 11 years," Tomlinson continues. "They do things like using their influence to stop me getting visas to go anywhere. So I write to them, and say, 'Look, ring me up, we'll have a meeting, we'll talk it out.' I mean, I feel a grievance. Talking to someone about that grievance would make me feel a lot better. We talk it over, have a handshake over it, and forget it.

"I know it's a wimpy American word, but it would mean a certain amount of 'closure' for me. I think it could be redressed easily by an honest talk with someone from MI6, but they never, ever reply to my letters."

Tomlinson's involvement with MI6 started the old-fashioned way - the proverbial tap on the shoulder at Cambridge, where he studied engineering and cultivated ambitions of joining the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm (he is a qualified pilot - his schedule for the rest of the week after our meeting includes flying across to Corsica to pick up a boat part). He initially rebuffed MI6's interest, but thought again a few years later, after failing the naval medical examination on the grounds of childhood asthma, doing a bit of travelling, realising he was unsuited to office work, and passing the Territorial Army's SAS selection.

Tomlinson began MI6's Intelligence Officers' New Entry Course in 1991. By his own account, he was a star pupil. He was subsequently dispatched, under an assortment of cover stories and false passports, to the imploding Bosnia-Herzegovina and the collapsing Russia, among other places. A discreetly glittering career seemed assured.

Then, on 24 April, 1995, Tomlinson's swipe-card was rejected by the scanners at MI6's Vauxhall Cross headquarters. He was then escorted to the personnel department and informed of his dismissal. When he describes this moment today, he resembles nothing so much as a man who has never recovered from an altar-side jilting. In his head, Tomlinson had pledged himself to MI6 for life. The Service's abrupt, and, to his mind, unfathomable, disrequiting of his loyalty clearly wounded him deeply, as did their equivalent of the I-still-want-to-be-your-friend soliloquy - an offer to help find him a job at a sympathetic City firm.

Easing former operatives into cosy second careers is thought to be fairly standard MI6 practice. "It's quite common," confirms the journalist and author Phillip Knightley, who has written extensively about spooks and spookery. "There is a sort of club of companies they deal with. Part of the reason would be to reward the loyalty of operatives, or so that the former officers keep quiet, and the firms might expect a quid pro quo, a tip-off of commercial interest." The offer didn't impress Tomlinson.

"I still find that really insulting," he spits. "Talk about imposing their narrow, venal aspirations on someone else. Nobody spent even two minutes asking me what I might be interested in."

Looking into starting afresh in Sydney in 1997, Tomlinson met with a publisher to discuss writing a book about his time in MI6. Encouraged, he typed up a synopsis. He was, he admits, worried that this represented a clear-cut breach of the Official Secrets Act, but he was reassured by the publisher's promise that the synopsis would remain locked in her filing cabinet while he thought about whether or not to proceed with the memoir.

Still somewhat rudderless and adrift, Tomlinson returned to England. Lacking options, and with bills mounting, he resignedly accepted a job that MI6 had found for him, with Jackie Stewart's Formula One team in Milton Keynes, and ruminated more on the book. Still anxious to do the right thing by MI6, he filed a request seeking advice about submitting a manuscript for security clearance. MI6 replied, advising him sternly not to even think about it.

Tomlinson was infuriated by their attitude, and emailed the Australian publisher from his work computer, indicating a desire to proceed with the project. A few days later, on 8 September, 1997, Tomlinson's flat was burgled - or, as Tomlinson believes, "burgled" - and his laptop, containing what he'd written of the book, taken. The following month, the publisher was visited by the Australian Federal Police, to whom, despite her previous assurances, she handed Tomlinson's synopsis. Back in England, Tomlinson was arrested and charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. He was convicted, sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, and served eight.

Asked if the experience, which included being interred as a Category A prisoner in HMP Belmarsh, scarred him, he replies: "Not really, no. It was a miserable time, but you remember the good things and you forget the 22 hours of utter boredom every day."

After release, Tomlinson's difficulties continued. He absconded, without documentation, to France in 1998 - this seems to have been as much a means of defiantly hoisting two fingers towards Vauxhall Cross as anything else - and was arrested.

He carried on to New Zealand, where his hotel room was raided. At New York's JFK airport, he was refused entry to the United States and deported - rather fortuitously, as Tomlinson's original itinerary had seen him due to leave the US on Swissair flight SR111 on 2 September, 1998, which plunged into the Atlantic shortly after take-off. He was harassed in France and Switzerland, and suffered repeated interdiction of his early attempts at an online presence - one of which showed Tomlinson superimposed before Vauxhall Cross in a daft hat, accompanied by the theme from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

All that was before the surfacing of The List, the underlying cause of Tomlinson's present travails.

In May 1998, a website belonging to indefatigable American activist/crank Lyndon LaRouche published a list of 115 alleged current and former MI6 officers. The Foreign Secretary at the time, the late Robin Cook, blamed Tomlinson. Tomlinson was thrown out of Switzerland, where he'd been staying, followed in Germany, and arrested in Italy.

His book The Big Breach - a terrific read, incidentally - did eventually appear. Its gestation was not orthodox. Initially it was published in Russia, and given away as a download on the internet. In 2001, it was published in the UK by a British house called Cutting Edge, which no longer exists.

Bill Campbell, a director of Mainstream Publishing, Cutting Edge's then-distributor, recalls no significant interference from the government. "I think," recalls Campbell, "they let it go because it was already in the public domain, with the Russian publication and the download. They didn't try to stop its publication, or anything like that. There was some communication from the Treasury solicitor, stating that the author would not be allowed to benefit in any way - so all Richard's royalties are still being held in an escrow account in an Edinburgh lawyer's office."

The Big Breach sold, by Campbell's recollection, somewhere in the vicinity of 12,000-14,000 copies. It caused controversy for Tomlinson's suggestions of links between the media and the security services (The Spectator, he alleged, once furnished an MI6 agent in Estonia with credentials), and of secret-service involvement in the death of Diana, Princess of Wales (the driver in whose car she died, Henri Paul, was an MI6 informer, according to Tomlinson). He also claimed that MI6 had been working on a plan to assassinate Slobodan Milosevic by contriving a car accident in a tunnel.

While MI6's heat abated after the book's publication - given the year, they may have decided that they had more pressing matters to attend to - Tomlinson's anger did not. He drifted between jobs as a snowboard instructor, deckhand, mathematics tutor and translator (he speaks five languages), never finding the excitement or sense of purpose MI6 had given him. "Oh, yeah, it was great," he says of his time with MI6, with almost painful wistfulness. "Brilliant fun."

He found his current job at the yacht firm a year or so ago. Then, in April, he went online again with the Tomlinson vs MI6 blog.

"It gets quite a lot of readers," he says. "I would say that most are either people from MI6, or crackpots. There was one bloke who kept coming on and accusing newsreaders - Jon Snow was one of them - of spying on him through his television set. He's got a whole website about this, apparently."

Tomlinson used, and is using, the blog to outline his personal grievances, his disgust with MI6's role in the UK's Iraq misadventure and, curiously, to make available an updated version of The List via a link on his website. He seems determined to annoy MI6 by doing the very thing they were accusing him of doing when he wasn't.

"Exactly," he grins. "I'm collating all the information I can find about every single MI6 officer on the internet, and putting it in one file, so now there's a searchable MI6 database."

Tomlinson's list comprises 210 names. Few of them will mean anything to most readers, with the exception of former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, whose service in the Service is long-standing Westminster legend. Other, older lists of alleged MI6 agents circulating cyberspace are longer but, Tomlinson claims, less accurate.

"That's why," he says, "I don't believe MI6 really think I did it originally, because the lists were so inaccurate. Things like ambassadors listed as MI6 officers, and MI6 know perfectly well that I know that ambassadors never work for MI6. But you can work out half of MI6 by looking at the diplomatic lists, you don't need to be a genius. I've just collated it and put it in one place."

Nevertheless, isn't there a possibility that this is, in some way, detrimental to Britain's national security?

"Yes, it is a bit," sighs Tomlinson, sounding suddenly rather deflated.

So why do it?

"It's all open-source information," he says, rallying. "It only would have taken two minutes to find beforehand. And it's MI6 who've drawn attention to it by arresting me."

Do you feel guilty?

"Why," he asks, "would I feel guilty about something I haven't done? I'm not in the slightest guilty of what they're accusing me of. There is nothing on my computer which is in breach of the Official Secrets Act."

Which, if true, begs the question: what are the British authorities doing getting involved with it? Phillip Knightley believes that if Tomlinson does sound paranoid, it doesn't mean that MI6 are not out to get him.

"They would feel," says Knightley, "that he let them down, first for whatever it was they sacked him for, then for blowing the whistle. They're a very tight-knit, loyal family, and they'll pursue him to the ends of the earth. If he tries to make another career, they'll do their best to ruin it. The very idea of writing a book..." Knightley draws a comparison with the story of Warren Reed, a (MI6-trained) former officer of Australia's Security and Intelligence Service, who went on to write books, fictional and not, about working in the intelligence services.

"They [MI6] destroyed his career," says Knightley. "Every time he had a new thing going, they destroyed him. When he found a job, they made contact with his bosses, planted nasty rumours about him. They do this partly to discourage others, but it is also possible that they want to discredit Tomlinson before he reveals something.

"There must be some deep, dark secret at the heart of this whole thing. As I understood it, he was a high-flyer, headed for great things. It doesn't surprise me that they didn't give him a reason, but it does surprise me that he claims to have no idea."

"I spoke to Special Plod yesterday," says Tomlinson. "I asked how they were getting on with my computers. They said they were still under investigation. I asked if they'd found anything to charge me with, and they said no. I asked if they were going to charge me with anything, and they said of course not, because I'm in France. So if they've got no realistic chance of charging me, what are they doing with my stuff?"

Tomlinson believes himself the victim of two factors. One is a desire on MI6's part to discourage any other agents from following his path into print - although Tomlinson notes, bitterly, that Dame Stella Rimington was allowed write a memoir about her time in MI5. The other is what seems an institutional failure by MI6 to understand either the internet or public relations. Closing down a website by legal means, or by hassling its hosts, is like stamping on mercury. Making a fuss about not wanting people to see something only inflames curiosity. Tomlinson's blog has wandered from server to server as various website hosts have been leant on - and, to the certain infuriation of his persecutors, Tomlinson has been posting all of the correspondence pertaining to this pressurising online.

"When I was in MI6," he says, "they were scared to death of the internet. They wouldn't have any internet connections in the office, even by the time I left in 1995. I'm sure they've moved on now."

I leave Tomlinson, unsure if he has, though. His love for the job he once had is obvious in his conversation, and in the fizzingly energetic chapters of The Big Breach which recall his time in the Service.

When I ask if he ever wonders what he'd be doing now if the last 11 years had gone according to plan, he looks haunted. "Most of my contemporaries," he says, "are heads of big MI6 stations, Geneva or somewhere like that. I'd only be working in declared posts, because my cover would have been well and truly blown. I could be anywhere. And the standard of living when you're overseas is fantastic, it really is."

Had he thought the job worthwhile?

"Yes," he says, emphatically. "I did, absolutely. I think I'd find it quite hard now. I was opposed to the intervention in Iraq, and even if I was in MI6 I'd be opposed to it, as I'm sure a lot of people in MI6 are. It would be harder to feel a strong sense of justification. During the Cold War, we were fighting something being imposed on us, but in this so-called war on terrorism I do think a lot of the cause of it is the West's double standards around the world.

"During the Cold War," he continues, "Britain was this innocent player which did face a threat. But we're not anymore. We're part of the problem. So I'd find it a little more difficult now."

Impossible though it obviously is, would he still want to work for MI6?

"Not really," he says, not entirely convincingly. "If they were to offer to shake hands on it, I'd feel fine. As recently as four or five years ago I'd have felt that I very much still wanted to be in the Service. I think that phase has gone, but I'm still very angry. I was just starting out. I only did minor things. I just look back at a lost opportunity, really."

Tomlinson glumly anticipates further harassment. He says that he doesn't fear for his physical safety, although starts at bumps in the night. He also intends to write a spy novel, which most armchair-educated psychologists would diagnose as an effort to stay connected in some way to the life he would rather have led. He says he wants to be left alone by MI6, but I'm not sure how true that is - like the ditched groom unable to get over it, he seems to derive some consolatory gratification from the fact that his former betrothed can't quite get him out of their head, either.

"In general," he says, "MI6 does work for the good, but it could have a better public image. They could sort that out without much expense or hassle. If you have a security service regarded as sinister or inept, you have a lot of problems recruiting people who are willing to help."

Certainly, MI6's public image is not enhanced by its pestering of Tomlinson.

It is impossible to argue with at least one of his statements. "I'd have thought," Tomlinson smiles, "that they'd have a thousand more important things to do, just at the moment."

But then maybe they have been reading Mr. Tomlinson's affadavit on the death of Diana [ed.]

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ news/features/story.jsp?story=705124

see also - http://tomlinsonvmi6.blogspot.com/2006/09/police-now-resort-to-blackmail.html

---

Revealed: how the BBC used MI5 to vet thousands of staff

By Chris Hastings, Arts and Media Editor (Filed: 02/07/2006) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/02/nspy02.xml

It is a tale of secret agents and surveillance that could have come straight out the BBC's classic spy drama Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

But the difference is that genuine spies were involved and they were operating behind the scenes at Broadcasting House rather than on the small screen.

Confidential papers, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, have revealed that the BBC allowed MI5 to investigate the backgrounds and political affiliations of -thousands of its employees, including newsreaders, reporters and continuity announcers.

The files, which shed light on the BBC's hitherto secret links with the Security Service, show that at one stage it was responsible for vetting 6,300 different BBC posts - almost a third of the total workforce.

They also confirm that the corporation held a list of "subversive organisations" and that evidence of certain kinds of political activity could be a bar to appointment or promotion.

The BBC's reliance on MI5 reached a peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s at exactly the same time as millions of viewers were tuning into the fictional adventures of George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and -Smiley's People.

David Dimbleby, John Humphrys and Anna Ford all began their careers with the broadcaster when the system was still in place.

The papers show that senior BBC figures covered up these links in the face of awkward questions from trade unions and the press. The documents refer to a "defensive strategy" based on "categorical denial". One file note, dated March 1 1985, states: "Keep head down and stonewall all questions."

The BBC, however, has always refused to be