Gideon's Spies

The CIA reports form part of the 1,051 documents Mohamed al-Fayed has to battle through the American courts to obtain copies of. The U.S. Justice Department has claimed the documents contained material “sensitive to national security.”

The Mossad report suggests that sensitivity could refer to why Britain had asked the United States to help in monitoring Diana.

“Britain saw her as a loose cannon,” insisted al-Fayed. “In fact she was a woman of great courage who was ready to confront the land mines issue.”

The Mossad investigation details how the various intelligence services hurriedly left Paris after the deaths of Diana and Dodi.

Mossad’s report contains a detailed timetable of Dodi and Diana’s last hours. It is partly based on firsthand observations by Maurice and his contacts. Other information came from Mossad’s “back channel” contacts with agents in the French capital, from MI6, the CIA, and French Intelligence.

“I have been told by a former senior Israeli intelligence officer that all those services had a vested interest in Diana and Dodi,” Mohamed al-Fayed has insisted.

Mossad’s account of the final moments of the lives of Diana and Dodi begins at 11 :45 P.M. Saturday, August 29, 1997, when Henri Paul was put in charge of the operation to whisk them away from the Ritz Hotel.

Mohamed al-Fayed still remembers vividly the instruction he had telephoned to Paul.

“I told him he must drive carefully, that he must never forget he had the life of the mother of the future king of England and my beloved son in his hands. I trusted him never to forget that. God knows, how I trusted him. God only knows now why I did.”

The next Mossad entry is 11:50 P.M. In the Ritz bar Trevor Rees-Jones, who was there to body-guard Diana and Dodi, was in a huddle with other security men from the hotel staff and Henri Paul, discussing the route he would use.

Paul was very bullish. He said the hotel would provide two Range Rovers to act as decoys for the waiting paparazzi. That would give him enough time to get away. Rees-Jones is reported to have said the plan “sounds good to me.”

00:15 A.M. Sunday, August 30. In the hotel lobby Henri Paul was using his cell phone to mobilize the two decoy vehicles.

00:19 A.M. The two decoy vehicles roared out of the Place Vendome that fronts the Ritz. Paparazzi give chase.

00:20 A.M. At the hotel’s rear entrance Paul arrived with the Mercedes. He was seen by one of the eyewitnesses that Mossad subsequently interviewed as “drumming his fingers nervously on the steering wheel.”

00:21 A.M. At the top of the Rue Cambon, a Mossad agent kept watch. He would later report that “a white Fiat Uno passed the top of the street.”

The Mossad report states that in the car were two intelligence officers from the French security service, DST. The DST—more formally known as the Directorate for Surveillance of the Territory—is the largest and most powerful of France’s intelligence agencies. With several thousand employees, it operates both internally and overseas. Its wide-ranging responsibilities include surveillance of all foreign embassies in Paris and conducting a number of clandestine operations. It reports to the incumbent minister of the interior.

00:22 A.M. The white Fiat Uno passed through traffic lights in the Place de la Concorde. Henri Paul’s Mercedes is forced to temporarily stop at the lights.

00:23 A.M. The Mercedes approaches the Alma tunnel. Henri Paul would most certainly have seen the white Uno ahead of him.

00:24 A.M. The Mercedes, traveling at high speed, passed over the dip at the tunnel entrance. In the back seat Diana and Dodi would have experienced for a split second a sensation not unlike that of a plunging roller-coaster.

Seconds later there came a thunderous noise inside the tunnel. A roaring screeching of metal, a reverberating, crumping sound that seemed to go on and on.

Henri Paul and Dodi were dead. Diana was dying.

Moments later, according to the Mossad report, the white Uno had driven into a side street off the Avenue Montalgne. Waiting there was a pentachnicon, its ramp lowered. The Uno had driven up the ramp. The pentachnicon’s doors had been closed.

Hours later the Uno had been gripped in the claws of the crusher. In moments it had become a piece of crushed metal, devoid of any identification.

There, at the time of writing, the matter rests. Can Tomlinson produce anything new? Could Ben-Menashe have found evidence that would finally satisfy al-Fayed’s belief in a conspiracy? Was Diana really pregnant at the time of her death? Had Mohamed al-Fayed become so blinded by grief mingled with anger that he was ready to make this thesis fit the facts?

These questions will be revisited well into this new century. But they may never be answered fully enough to satisfy Mohamed al-Fayed or convince all those who believe him a dangerously misguided man who is using vast sums of money to nail down a truth that may, just may, be best kept under lock and key by all those directly involved.