The recent royal wedding and Cannes Festival release of Unlawful Killing has prompted a resurgence of public interest in the "conspiracy theory" that the royal family and British intelligence secretly arranged the car accident responsible for Princess Diana's death. Mohammed Al Fayed, the billionaire father of Dodi Al Fayed, who was also killed in the accident, has spent millions of dollars on litigation attempting to prove that the French and British government guilty of a massive cover-up. He's also a major backer of the new film.
Al Fayed's case is based in part on statements Diana made to friends about a "black network" that wanted her dead and would set her up to die in a car accident. However it's supported by numerous inconsistencies in the "official" account of the accident. The most serious is the claim by French police that the limousine driver's blood alcohol level was three times the normal limit -- which is disputed by the bodyguard Rhees-Jones, who survived the accident, as well as family, friends and work colleagues of the driver Henri Paul. The latter describe him as a highly conscientious professional who rarely drank to intoxication and never while on duty. Others include the failure of the French police to seal the crime scene and the extraordinary length of time it took to get medical attention for Diana, who was still conscious immediately after the accident. After taking thirty minutes to get to the scene, the ambulance drivers left her at the side of the road while they extracted other victims from the limousine. It then took the ambulance another hour to drive her four miles to the hospital.
Some researchers strongly suspect Henri Paul's blood samples were tampered with. Here is a video link demonstrating how someone looks and acts at a blood alcohol level of 1.75 mg per liter. The experimental subject was so intoxicated he could hardly walk and someone had to help him put his car in gear. The video also notes that the pathologist noted no smell of alcohol in Henri Paul's stomach at autopsy.
While there definitely appears to be a cover-up, it has always puzzled me that people blame the Royal Family, without looking at some of Dodi Al Fayed's unsavory connections through his uncle Adnan Khashoggi. As I wrote in my recent review of Chain of Command, Khashoggi is a Saudi arms dealer and businessman with longstanding ties to the CIA and Bush family. His sister Samira married Mohammed Al Fayed and was the mother of Dodi Al Fayed, Diana's companion at the time of the accident. At one point, Mohammed was also business partners with Khashoggi.
A Long History of Unsavory Intelligence Connections
Khashoggi is best known for his role as the middleman responsible for the arms deal in the Iran-Contra affair. This was a complex transaction in which the Reagan administration with (CIA operative and Marine Colonel Oliver North serving as point man) illegally sold weapons to Iran, an enemy nation, to defy Congress in providing continued funding for the CIA-backed Contras (mercenaries) fighting to topple the democratically elected government of Nicaragua.
Khashoggi's name first surfaces in intelligence archives as a partner with George H.W. Bush in a CIA-front company known as Barrick Gold and later as Barrick Resources International (a company that mysteriously wound up with the bulk of the gold various Nazi war criminals smuggled out of Europe). Khashoggi was also involved in BCCI (the bank used by the CIA to launder drug profits and to finance covert assassinations and other black operations prior to its shutdown by bank regulators in 1991). Moreover he was also closely linked with the off-the-books intelligence network Bush senior set up after Carter removed him as CIA director in 1997, with the help of the Saudi royal family and Saudi chief of intelligence Kamal Adham (this network is described in detail by Russ Baker in Family of Secrets). Following BCCI's demise, Khashoggi used his own banking operations in Armenia and elsewhere to finance weapons deals and training cells for this off-the-books network, as well as to launder illicit drug profits.
Khashoggi is also linked to the murder of investigative reporter Danny Casolaro, killed in 1991 just as he was about to release more evidence of the direct involvement of high level US officials (including Bush senior) in Iran Contra, BCCI and the theft and misuse of innovative PROMIS personal tracking software. An interesting 2001 post on Disinformation reveals that Mohammed Al Fayed initially believed Casolaro's murder was linked to Diana's death but that the CIA stonewalled his efforts to prove it (http://old.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id902/pg1/index.html).
Khashoggi's Link to 9/11
Khashoggi is linked to 9/11 in several ways. He was part owner with Adham of Oryx, the company that owned and operated Huffman Aviation in Florida, where Mohamed Ata and other members of his crew learned to fly airplanes (Huffman Aviation was also implicated in smuggling illicit drugs from South America). In addition, several of Khashoggi's banks were also involved in funding terrorist camps and biological/chemical warfare laboratories in Nagorny Karabakh (a semi-autonomous region in Azerbaijan, one of the former Soviet republics).
However most significant was Khashoggi's indictment in 2002 for a stock scam in which he clearly demonstrated foreknowledge of the giant Wall Street slump that would follow the twin towers collapse in September 2011. The scam involved Genesis Intermedia (GENI), a communications company. Khashoggi and a number of other Irangate figures who owned GENI stock loaned it to brokerage houses in return for cash collateral -- leaving the brokerage houses with worthless stocks when share prices collapsed following 9/11.
Blaming the Royal Family
I have always suspected Mohammed Al Fayed knows more than he lets on
about the true circumstances of Diana's death. Perhaps he (rightly?) believes that
it's safer to blame the royal family than the deadly off-the-shelf
intelligence network his brother-in-law Adnan Khashoggi belongs to. So for now he prefers to promote an alternative scenario to keep the issue alive.
For a more detailed summary of Khashoggi's financial scams and shadowy intelligence connections -- as well as a full list of the dead bodies that litter his past (including Danny Casolaro) - consult Daniel Hopiscker Welcome to Terrorland www.madcowmorningnews.com and Alex Constantine Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists http://webfairy.org/constantine/index.htm
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