Diana--A Closely Guarded Secret (34 page)

A conspiracy is a secret plan, involving more than one person, to commit a crime or to do harm to another person. In this case, as I have outlined, it is Mohamed Fayed’s belief that the conspiracy involved the secret services from both Britain and America working in collusion. The argument is deeply flawed, and one has only to look at the likely method of execution to see that. To stage a crash in a tunnel at night with a guarantee of killing all four people in the car would be impossible; evidenced by the fact that Rees-Jones lived and that Diana survived the crash, if only for a few hours. What should also be factored in is that if Diana and Dodi had been wearing seat belts, both would almost certainly have survived. The theory is completely untenable, especially given that neither the CIA nor MI6 (if indeed they were monitoring the situation at all) would have
had any information about the impromptu movements of Dodi and Diana, and therefore no time in which to set the mechanics of the assassination in operation. Moreover, I have made no mention of the thousands of variables – such as traffic, weather, road conditions, and the random presence of witnesses – that would have made such an assassination attempt completely unworkable. No intelligence agency in the world would have given such a plan even half a glance.

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was not a murder by conspiracy, but a tragic accident that could, and should, have been avoided.

Yet what is done is done, and no amount of rehashing the might-have-beens will ever undo the results of that terrible crash. The reverberations of her death travelled around the world, touching millions of lives, just as she had touched them when she was alive. I just hope that people will remember her as she was at her best – a warm-hearted and fun-loving woman who, as she wished, really did make a difference.

It is probably a vain hope, but I owe it to her.

Inspector Ken Wharfe,
MVO
, was personal protection officer to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, in charge of round-the-clock security service at home and abroad, from 1987 until 1993. He retired from the Metropolitan Police in 2002, after thirty-five years’ service, nearly half of it in royalty protection. He remains in demand both as a speaker and as a commentator on royal security.

Robert Jobson
is a leading royal commentator and writer dubbed the ‘Godfather of Royal Reporting’ by the
Wall Street Journal
. He is Royal Editor of the
London Evening Standard
, Australia’s
Channel 7
shows
Sunrise
and
The Morning Show
, as well as royal commentator for NBC News. In the UK he is a regular on BBC, ITV and Sky News. A bestselling author and award-winning correspondent, he has been at the forefront of royal reporting for nearly twenty-five years.