David Spedding, SIS chief in 1997, dies at 58, avoids trial
banana
Service (SIS) at the time of the assassination of Princess Diana and
Dodi Fayed in 1997, died yesterday at the age of 58.
He was one of the SIS officers whom Mohamed al-Fayed fought in France
for the official investigators to seek to interview.
Clearly he will now not be able to give evidence either to French
investigators or the English inquest with regard to the commissioning,
content, and discussion of the SIS report to the Windsor family's Way
Ahead Group on the problem to the family represented by the Princess
Diana/Dodi Fayed relationship; or with regard to his own movements
around the time of the assassination.
SPEDDING AND PRINCESS DIANA/DODI FAYED
======================================
Spedding was named in two documents, of which the provenance has not
been established, but which have certainly both played a part in the
post-assassination events.
The first is the alleged CIA foreign intelligence report, dated 17 June
1997, which Oswald LeWinter tried to sell to Mohamed al-Fayed, and in
connection with which LeWinter was jailed in Austria.
This document alleges that Spedding, with Windsor family "blessing",
requested US liaison with SIS for assistance in solving the "Dodi
problem" by means of murder.
The document is at
<http://www.1underground.com/Features/features193dianamurder.shtml>
and elsewhere.
The second is the preamble to the famous 'SIS list' put out in May 1999.
In this document he is mentioned as having been "ordered to organise the
murder of Diana, Princess of Wales and her friend Dodi Al Fayed". The
preamble also mentioned the following fellow officers in SIS:
- Richard Spearman, "Chief of staff for Sir David Spedding [who was]
given an assignment and moved to Paris two weeks prior to the
murder[s]",
- Nicholas Langman, "Principal assistant to Richard Spearman [who was]
also involved with Spedding in the murder"
- Richard Dearlove, "the incoming Head of MI6 in September 1999-- [who]
was in Paris two weeks before the Aug. 31, 1997 crash".
Dearlove is still head of SIS (MI6).
NOT-SO-SUBTLE HINTS ALLEGING THAT SOME THOUGHT SPEDDING WAS TOO CLOSE TO
========================================================================
THE VATICAN
===========
The obituary below, by Richard Norton-Taylor, refers to a piece of
psy-ops 'given by contemporaries of Spedding at school', according to
which Spedding, when at school (ahem), ran a secret group, unknown to
the (in his view too Protestant) authorities, and one of the things they
apparently did in this group was to hold secret meetings with a Catholic
priest.
After retiring, Spedding was not given a job coordinating security in
Northern Ireland, as his predecessor Maurice Oldfield was. (Oldfield
too, BTW, a High Anglican, held meetings with Catholic priests - in his
case when he was doing the job in Northern Ireland). The plot thickens,
given that the Telegraph, as well as being a vehicle for numerous SIS
psy-ops pieces, is owned by Conrad Black and is known too for being a
gathering place of right wing Roman Catholic Tories. Who is sending what
message to whom with this veiled allegation is a matter for speculation.
OBITUARY BY RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR IN THE GUARDIAN
=================================================
The Guardian obituary, included below, is at:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4203822,00.html>.
***START GUARDIAN OBITUARY***
Sir David Spedding
MI6 chief behind post-cold war change of role
Richard Norton-Taylor
Guardian
Thursday June 14, 2001
Sir David Spedding, who has died of lung cancer aged 58, was chief of
the secret intelligence service, or MI6 as it is commonly known,
overseeing a shift in priorities after the end of the cold war, as well
as its move to its hugely expensive, high-profile, new headquarters at
Vauxhall Cross by the Thames in central London.
In contrast to many of his colleagues, who thought such a prominent,
almost ostentatious, building was scarcely appropriate for a secret
service, Sir David praised it. But his defence of such a public building
was not reflected in his attitude towards his own role. Unlike his
predecessor, Sir Colin McColl, Sir David never appeared in public. This
is the first time his photograph has been published.
An Arabist - a member of what the Foreign Office used to call the "camel
corps" - his career was typical of an MI6 officer recruited in the
1960s. He was educated at Sherborne public school in Dorset, where,
contemporaries later told the Daily Telegraph, he ran a small "cell" of
chums who would take off to a safe house for afternoons of conversation,
Chianti and tobacco, and held secret meetings with a Catholic priest -
the school was fiercely, and in his view, intolerably Protestant - to
discuss philosophy, music and art history.
One schoolfriend, Osman Streater, later chairman of the the Savile club,
was reported to have recalled: "In two years our secret never leaked.
Wonderful times." Spedding had, perhaps, already proved his aptitude for
his future career.
He joined MI6 shortly after taking a history degree at Hertford College,
Oxford - where one of his tutors was an MI6 talent spotter. He became an
Arab specialist after studying at the Middle East Centre for Arabic
Studies, the "school for spies", at Shemlan in the Lebanon.
Attached to the British embassy in Chile between 1972 and 1974, when
Salvador Allende's socialist government was destabilised and toppled by
a CIA-backed coup, he was posted to Amman at a time when Jordan was used
by Iraq as a conduit to buy western arms. He was then made responsible
for the entire Mid dle East, including covert intelligence operations
during the Gulf war. He instructed his officers, with limited success,
to obtain first-hand intelligence on the Iraqi leadership.
Stephen Dorril describes in his recent book, MI6, how Sir David also
planned disruptive actions aimed at Saddam Hussein by Saudi and Kuwaiti
volunteers trained by the SAS. But suitable volunteers were not
forthcoming.
Sir David combined his Middle East role with responsibility for liaising
with the security service, MI5. His reputation inside Whitehall was not
damaged by MI5's role in the detention of innocent Palestinians during
the Gulf war - an operation which seriously embarrassed the For eign
Office. In 1993, he was promoted to the post of MI6's director of
requirements and operations.
A year later, he was appointed "C", as the head of the service is called
in Whitehall - he signs his secret memos, which also go to the Queen,
with that single letter, in green ink - when he was first officially
named as a member of MI6. He had actually been named as an MI6 officer
by Kim Philby in a television interview back in 1971.
In 1998, Sir David invited Dame Judi Dench to MI6's Christmas lunch,
after the actress, who had played "M" in recent Bond movies, expressed
interest in learning more about her real-life counterpart.
He successfully defended MI6 in the face of an internal review conducted
by by Sir Michael Quinlan, former permanent secretary at the Ministry of
Defence, into Britain's "foreign intelligence requirements and
capability".
Sir David helped to shift MI6 towards new priorities, including
countering the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons, money-laundering, the drug trade (notably in South America),
and cooperating with MI6's erstwhile targets - the intelligence services
of the former Warsaw Pact countries in eastern Europe.
In 1998 Robin Cook, then foreign secretary, showered MI6 with
unprecedented public praise for adapting to the "fresh priorities" of
the Labour government in fighting international crime and drugs barons.
He referred to its work tracking terrorist groups, "disrupting their
operations and breaking their weapons supply chains" and in revealing
Iraq's continuing attempts to stockpile banned chemical and biological
weapons.
In a rare reference to a specific operational activity, Cook added:
"They have tracked Iran's nuclear weapons programme and have enabled us
to disrupt Iranian attempts to procure British technology." On
instructions from Tony Blair, he also helped set up successful SAS
operations against indicted Bosnian Serb war criminals.
However, parliament's intelligence and security committee repeatedly
chided Sir David, as well as the heads of MI5 and GCHQ, for not keeping
ministers sufficiently informed about their activities. Cook dismissed
as "pure fantasy" allegations by the former MI5 officer, David Shayler,
that MI6 was involved in a 1995 plot to assassinate the Libyan leader,
Colonel Gadafy. The allegation, subsequently backed up by a secret MI6
report placed on the internet, is the subject of a police investigation.
Jack Straw, the new foreign secretary, in a tribute yesterday, said he
was personally grateful for Sir David's advice after his retirement - a
reference to his work with the Home Office on countering drugs-
traffickers and security for the royal family.
Sir David was knighted in 1996 and retired in 1999. He is survived by
his widow and two sons.
• David Rolland Spedding, diplomat and intelligence chief, born March 7
1943; died June 13 2001
***END GUARDIAN OBITUARY***
--
banana
dormouse
news:wqIljTA$RTK7...@borve.demon.co.uk...
> David Spedding, who was the head of the British Secret Intelligence
> Service (SIS) at the time of the assassination of Princess Diana and
> Dodi Fayed in 1997, died yesterday at the age of 58.
>
> He was one of the SIS officers whom Mohamed al-Fayed fought in France
> for the official investigators to seek to interview.
>
> Clearly he will now not be able to give evidence either to French
> investigators or the English inquest with regard to the commissioning,
> content, and discussion of the SIS report to the Windsor family's Way
> Ahead Group on the problem to the family represented by the Princess
> Diana/Dodi Fayed relationship; or with regard to his own movements
> around the time of the assassination.
>
>
>
> SPEDDING AND PRINCESS DIANA/DODI FAYED
> ======================================
Keep taking the tablets.
--
dormouse
Ron
"banana" <banana@REMOVE_THIS.borve.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:wqIljTA$RTK7...@borve.demon.co.uk...
> 1943; died June 13 2001
>
> ***END GUARDIAN OBITUARY***
> --
> banana
On the subject of obitraries - had it not been for the death of Lana Mark's
father Diana would not have cancelled her holiday with her friend and
probably would not have been with Dodi in Paris. Worth checking out.
GODS...@home.com
On Fri, 15 Jun 2001 21:01:17 -0700, "Ron" <ron_...@lineone.net>
wrote:
>
>On the subject of obitraries - had it not been for the death of Lana Mark's
>father Diana would not have cancelled her holiday with her friend and
>probably would not have been with Dodi in Paris. Worth checking out.
If there was some longer term set up in the works like remember the
theft of the car and replacement of it's electronics, the assumption
of Henri Paul to the acting security chief after Hocking (sp?) went
out of the position a few months earlier.
The hullaballo raza ma taz about a $100,000 dollar ring could have
chummed the fish, Diana. With some consideration that if she
enjoyed her vacation(s) on MAF's yatchs, etc.
So had any occurance within say a month or two of her enjoying
a vacation, cruise, (re)newing acquaintance with Dodi, he says
something like as a favor just let's stop in Paris one night
on the way home, we will pick up the $100,000 ring, etc.
Well what girl could refuse? Maybe but I'd give it better
than 50:50 odds.
The rest could have been put together on very short notice.
Call a few pap's. Get HP. Get the car. A few spooks.
There had to be some fly in the ointment or spy in the
camp. If they were unexpected to come to Paris until
a supposed decision less than a day earlier and then
when they took off who knew the destination. Airport
traffic controllers? Spy's there?
So when they arrive at the Paris airport paparazzi are
waiting for their arrival. If someone was not doing a
good selling job to whip up a bunch of paps on short
notice I'd miss my guess. But HP, for instance, could
have set that whole thing up without a belch during
lunch. They said he knew the paps because he worked
counter them practically every day as security chief.
So I think a solid spy in the organization. It takes
some degree of confidence in a report before somebody
it going to go far out of their way. Imagine somebody
calling a friend in Reno and saying an airplane just
took off from San Francisco where it should be headed
for Los Angeles but I think it may detour and arrive
in Reno so you change your plans and go the the airport
to see if it comes on the chance that you MAY get a
photograph that you MIGHT later be able to sell SOMEDAY?
Long odds.
But say, "the boss wants you to get down there NOW
and you'll get the check tomorrow", much higher
probability.
Or HP will get you the cash on the spot, now we're
talking business without a doubt assuming the teller
and HP have a good reputation to work with and
everything I have heard is that he was well regarded.
<a href="http://members.home.com/godsbrain">G.O.D.S.B.R.A.I.N.</a><br>
Ron
<GODS...@HOME.COM> wrote in message
news:i6pkitkm0ttn5p7v1...@4ax.com...
Yes. The impression I get was Rat contacted Darmon that very day to drive
for him and Rat was after a particular shot. A last minute assignment.
Also whilst on the subject did they ask Rat why Darmon was still working
after midnight and why he still wanted his hands free on the back of the
bike if he was just following the car to its destination which was stated by
one of the agency chiefs. Why hadn't Darmon gone off "duty"?