The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

Debate over whether the Essenes authored the Dead Sea Scrolls still continues, warmed by archaeological evidence found in 2004, but few outside Baigent and Leigh’s publishing house continue to seriously suggest that the Vatican has hidden scrolls damaging to its faith. The Dead Sea Scrolls is one alleged cover-up that can have the last rites read over it.

The Vatican suppressed Dead Sea Scrolls which rocked the foundations of the Catholic faith: ALERT LEVEL 1

Further Reading

John Allegro, «The Untold Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls», Harper’s, August 1966

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception: Why a Handful of Religious Scholars Conspired to Suppress the Revolutionary Contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1991

Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered: The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents Withheld for over 35 Years, 1992

Florentino Garcia Martinez and Julio Trebolle Barrera, The People of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Their Writings, Beliefs and Practices, tr Wilfred G. E. Watson, 1995

Diana, Princess Of Wales

It was news that shocked the world. In the early hours (GMT) of Sunday 31 August 1997, reports started coming from Paris that Diana, Princess of Wales, had been injured in a car accident. Then came updates reporting she was dead. Also killed in the car crash in the tunnel beneath Pont de l’Alma were Diana’s lover, Dodi Al-Fayed, and the driver, Henri Paul. Dodi’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was seriously injured.

The cause of the crash seemed clear. Chased by paparazzi on motorcycles, Paul had driven too fast — 75 mph (120kph) according to one French police estimate — into the tunnel, clipped a white Fiat Uno and, in overcorrecting, had swerved the Mercedes S280 into the thirteenth pillar. There were also reports that he had been drinking. None of the occupants had been wearing seatbelts.

Autumn seemed to come early to Britain that year, as a stunned nation shed tears for «the Queen of Hearts». As the sorrow subsided, people began to wonder how the female icon of the latter half of the 20th century, the most famous and photographed woman on the planet, could have died in something so mundane as a car crash.

Perhaps, people began to say, it wasn’t an accident. The loudest voice of suspicion belonged to Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al-Fayed, the owner of the Harrods department store. According to Al-Fayed, Diana and his son were assassinated. Al-Fayed even named the guilty party: Prince Philip of the British Royal Family. Naturally, Philip didn’t dirty his hands personally — he ordered the security service MI6 to carry out the hit on his 36-year-old daughter-in-law. There are legion other Diana conspiracies (it was the IRA whatdunnit, it was Le Cercle who sponsored her death because of her opposition to wealth-generating landmines, she was a ritual sacrifice by Satanists, she faked her death to live a paparazzi-free life …) but Al-Fayed’s retains the pole position.

In his view, the British Royal Family needed Diana eliminated because she had become pregnant by Dodi and intended to marry him. Their child would be a Muslim half-brother to the second and third in line to throne, an impossible embarrassment to the white, Anglican Windsors. Al-Fayed claims that Diana told him personally that her life had been threatened. «The person who is spearheading these threats,» she said, «is Prince Philip.» Diana also told a number of other people that she feared for her life. In his account of life as Diana’s butler, A Royal Duty (2003), Paul Burrell recorded that ten months before her death she wrote to him claiming that «XXXX is planning an ’accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry.» She also told her voice coach Peter Settelen that she thought that her former lover, bodyguard Barry Mannakee, had been murdered in a faked motorcycle crash. Evidently, Diana had concerns over safety. And the Windsors had a motive of sorts.