British security ‘leaked Squidgy tape’

The sensational "Squidgygate" tapes of Princess Diana talking to her alleged lover James Gilbey were probably the work of British intelligence, the inquest into her death has heard. The Princess's former protection officer Ken Wharfe told the hearing that the intelligence listening station GCHQ routinely bugged the conversations of Diana, as well as other members of the royal family, because of heightened IRA activity at the time.

The 1989 recordings of Diana talking intimately on the telephone to Gilbey, who was named as one of the princess's lovers earlier in the inquest, were probably made by the security centre and broadcast over the airwaves for radio hams to pick up, the Princess' former protection officer told the hearing. On the infamous tapes Gilbey repeatedly told her "I love you" during a half-hour conversation on New Year's Eve 1989 and referred to her as "Squidgy" 53 times.

Transcripts from the tape were published by the Sun newspaper in 1992 and a phone line was even set up so readers could ring in and listen for themselves. Wharfe told the hearing at London's High Court how Diana rang the 36p-a-minute line herself. Wharfe said: "Diana raised the subject with me in a fairly light-hearted way - the fact that it had reached the front page of a national tabloid newspaper. She had listened to them to confirm their authority. When I asked if it was her, she said of course it was. The style and delivery was her." (Continued below)

Wharfe also told the inquest that Diana's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, the only person to survive the Paris crash, was partly to blame for her death because he treated the paparazzi as the "enemy". Wharfe, who guarded the Princess from 1987 to 1993, was fiercely critical of Rees-Jones's "bizarre" actions before the car crash, saying the accident would "never have happened" if Rees-Jones had tried to come to an understanding with photographers. Wharfe said he used to "manage" the paparazzi so photographs could be taken in an organised way. "The very fact that they played this cat-and-mouse game, which began in Sardinia, was to me the beginning of the end."