Flashback 1998: WP..NSA Admits to Spying on Princess Diana
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 12, 1998; Page A13
The National Security Agency has disclosed that U.S. intelligence is holding 1,056 pages of classified information about the late Princess Diana, inspiring a flurry of sensational headlines this week across London's tabloids.
"America's spy chiefs admitted last night they snooped on Princess Diana for years -- and learned some of her most intimate love secrets," The Mirror reported on Thursday. The Daily Record claimed that the NSA intercepts "have gone on right until she died in the Paris car crash with Dodi Fayed."
The truth, while intriguing, is unlikely to be so lurid. The source of the Fleet Street speculation was a simple, two-page NSA denial of a Freedom of Information Act request. In the denial, released last month, the super-secret U.S. spy agency admitted possessing a Diana file.
The document says nothing about the contents of those 1,056 secret pages, why they were gathered or how they were obtained. One U.S. intelligence official said yesterday that the references to Diana in intercepted conversations were "incidental."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/dec98/diana12.htm
