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| Martin Bashir inquiry: Diana, the reporter, and the BBC |
The program, which attracted a UK
audience of 23m, was a career-defining moment for reporter Martin Bashir.
But after accusations resurfaced last
autumn that Bashir misled the princess to gain her trust, the BBC established
an inquiry led by the former Supreme Court judge Lord Dyson. That inquiry has
judged Bashir to be "unreliable", "devious" and
"dishonest."
Bashir was investigated by the BBC at the
time by Tony Hall, who went on to become the BBC's director-general. Hall found
that Bashir was "honest" and an "honorable man". Dyson has
condemned Hall's inquiry as "flawed" and "woefully
ineffective".
Until now, the full story behind the scoop
has remained hidden for a quarter of a century.
The interview became one of the 20th Century's seminal TV events. As the separated wife of the future king, Princess Diana spoke of adultery, palace plotting, mental and physical illness, and how Prince Charles was unfit for the job.
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| Martin Bashir inquiry: Diana, the reporter, and the BBC |
"Do you really think a campaign was
being waged against you?" Martin Bashir asked Princess Diana, having spent
the preceding weeks amplifying the alarm bells in her head about just such a
campaign. He claimed uniquely placed sources were telling him about dirty
tricks by journalists, royal courtiers, the intelligence services, and even her
friends.
"Yes, I did," replied Diana.
At the same time, Princess Diana's brother
Charles Spencer disclosed that he'd kept contemporaneous notes of his meetings
with Bashir, and the claims he made.
Lord Dyson's report represents the BBC's formal response to the allegations against Martin Bashir and the failure of
Tony Hall's 1996 inquiry to get to the bottom of this affair.
However, so serious were last autumn's
renewed allegations of misconduct that the current Panorama team decided this
needed to be investigated by the program itself to restore public trust in
Panorama's journalism and independence.
We've talked to almost all the witnesses
who have given evidence to Lord Dyson and much more besides, including detailed
testimony from Earl Spencer.
Like Lord Dyson, we have also seen
internal BBC documents that not only show Bashir repeatedly lied, but also
acknowledge that there was a serious breach of journalistic ethics and BBC
rules. And yet the BBC management board was told by Hall that he was certain
Bashir had not set out to deceive, while Hall's note intended for the
corporation's governing body said he was an "honest and honorable
man".
Lord Dyson says: "What Mr. Bashir did was not an impulsive act done in the spur of the moment. It was carefully planned… What he did was devious and dishonest."
Bashir contacts Earl Spencer
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| Martin Bashir inquiry: Diana, the reporter, and the BBC |
On 24 August 1995, Bashir left a telephone
message with one of Spencer's assistants: "Not seeking interview or
info", just "15 minutes of time to talk". He then sent a BBC-headed letter claiming to have spent the "past three months investigating
press behavior". In fact, Bashir had spent much of that time working on
other Panorama programs. However, his letter intimated that a dogged
investigation had unearthed something big about press intrusion into the
Spencer family.
"I simply [want] to share some
information which I believe, may be of interest," he wrote, calculating
Spencer would bite knowing that he had had his own battles with the media. With
no response, Bashir called again on 29 August. Spencer said he could meet him
in London at 18:00 for a quick drink.
On the face of it, the suddenness of
Spencer's invitation to a meeting may well have taken Bashir by surprise. In
order to ingratiate himself with Earl Spencer to gain access to his sister, the
reporter intended to show Spencer - falsely - that his former head of security,
ex-soldier, Alan Waller, was being paid regularly by Rupert Murdoch's News
International and the intelligence services to spy on the Spencer family.
However, Bashir didn't show this to Spencer at their first brief meeting -
presumably, because he hadn't yet created the "information".
Lord Dyson said he could not be certain
about the precise date when this "information" was created. However,
our own investigation suggests this happened immediately after Bashir's
introductory drink with Spencer.
Spencer had agreed to continue their conversation at his country estate, Althorp, two days later at 11:30 on 31 August.
The fake bank statements
To help prepare the
"information", Bashir made an urgent call to a former colleague, Matt
Weissler, begging him to drop everything for a job that couldn't wait. The
graphic designer doesn't recall the exact date except that it was at the
junction of August and September. Weissler's business partner at the time told
me that Bashir called him first and remembers it being around the time of the
Notting Hill Carnival, which in 1995 ended on 28 August. He says that because
Bashir wanted a rushed overnight job, he couldn't do it and suggested he call
Weissler instead.
Both Weissler and his business partner are
also clear that the call came after hours. Since Spencer's diary shows he had
his first meeting with Bashir on the evening of the 29th, the evidence points
to Bashir having called Weissler soon after his drink with Spencer.
Weissler says Bashir came to his flat and
dictated from his notebook details of what he said were two of Alan Waller's
bank statements, which he claimed to have seen - £4,000 from News International
on 8 March 1994, and £6,500 from a Jersey-based company called "Penfolds
Consultants" on 4 June. Bashir didn't mention the story he was working on
was about Princess Diana, only that it "could lead to something big"
in relation to "surveillance by MI5 or MI6".
The designer assumed that Bashir had
actually seen Waller's original bank statements. He told Bashir the job of
recreating them would take all night. Weissler says that since Bashir was due
to fly somewhere the following morning, he instructed him to courier the
graphics to him at Heathrow at 07:00. Presumably, Bashir wanted them ready for
his trip to Althorp first thing on the 31st.
Spencer's note of that meeting shows that
Bashir mentioned "payments" to Waller, which he said were regular:
"8/3/94 £4K News International £4K quarterly" and "4/6/94 £6.5K
Penfolds, 4 payments". "Penfolds Consultants", said Bashir, was
a Jersey-based front company for the intelligence services.
What had really hooked Spencer, however,
was another false claim by Bashir - that the private secretary of Prince
Charles, Commander Richard Aylard, was conspiring against Diana. Spencer's
notes show Bashir having claimed that Aylard had been handed secretly recorded
conversations and, in an apparent reference to the possibility of divorce, told
journalist Jonathan Dimbleby: "We are in the end game. Shit or bust."
Spencer says this knocked him sideways so
he called Panorama editor Steve Hewlett. Although Spencer didn't list Bashir's
claims to Hewlett, he did ask him if he could be trusted. Hewlett, according to
Spencer assured him that Bashir was "one of my best".
Bashir is introduced to Diana
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| Martin Bashir inquiry: Diana, the reporter, and the BBC |
In evidence to Lord Dyson, Bashir
categorically denies he showed any such document to Spencer. However, Spencer
noted the following comment from Bashir: "Patrick Jephson was a gd friend
of Aylard + had business connections until 1992. Nonexec director of a company
that Aylard was on the board of Financial investment co. Jephson cashed in shared
+resigned in 1992."
This echoed Diana's well-publicized fears
of a conspiracy by her estranged husband's camp at St James's Palace to
discredit her.
Because Spencer could make no sense of
such alleged treachery, he thought his sister should hear all this directly
from Bashir, so he telephoned her to suggest that she should meet Bashir.
"Darling Carlos," she replied in an affectionate note shown for the
first time to Panorama. Using their childhood names for each other, the note
said: "I so appreciated the contents of our telephone call this morning -
it all makes complete sense to what is going on around me at this present time.
'They' underestimate the Spencer strength! Lots of love from Duch x"
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| Martin Bashir inquiry: Diana, the reporter, and the BBC |
On 19 September, Spencer introduced Bashir
to Diana. During this meeting, Spencer noted some 30 claims that he attributes
to Bashir, including Jephson's alleged plots against her: "Jephson -
dangerous: money. Left offshore a/c in March 1994".
By the end of the meeting, Spencer told me
he had become highly skeptical. "I warned Diana that his stories didn't
add up and apologized to her... and she said, 'Oh, don't worry, Carlos. It's
nice to see you. It doesn't matter at all.' And I thought that was the last
time I'd hear from or about Martin Bashir."
Bashir has claimed that most of the
comments noted down by Spencer came from Diana, but Lord Dyson finds: "I
am satisfied that Mr. Bashir said most, if not all, of the things that are
recorded in Earl Spencer's notes."
The reporter gave a very different account
of his dealings with Earl Spencer - and in particular, the claims attributed to
him - in his evidence to Lord Dyson. He denied he had said many of the things
attributed to him by Earl Spencer. Despite the findings of Lord Dyson, he still
stands by his account.
For Diana that encounter was just the start of numerous meetings with Bashir. As Lord Dyson says, by late summer 1995, she was "keen on the idea of a television interview".
Diana's friend Rosa Monckton has written that everyone knew something was wrong "but none of us could put a finger on it".
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| Martin Bashir inquiry: Diana, the reporter, and the BBC |
On 30 October, the day after Diana had
secretly confirmed the interview with Bashir, she met her lawyer Lord Mishcon
and described to him a series of lurid plots which she said had been hatched
against her.
Asked to identify her sources Diana replied
only that they were "reliable" and included GCHQ.
Is it a coincidence that among the
top-level sources, Bashir would later claim to BBC management that he had met
while "investigating" the dirty tricks campaign against Diana, was a
member of GCHQ? It was, however, unheard of for a serving intelligence officer
to disclose intercepts (even assuming that Diana's communications were being
intercepted, which itself seems highly dubious) to a journalist.
The key question about the BBC for both our inquiry and Lord Dyson's was: How did Bashir's machinations elude the corporation's most senior executives, all of whom had been editors and journalists for whom the first rule is to cast a skeptical eye over anything that doesn't seem to add up?
Alarm bells at the BBC
The first alarm bell that should have
warned BBC management something was wrong rang in December 1995, a month after
the sensational interview had been broadcast. Designer Weissler approached
current affairs boss Tim Gardam and Tim Suter and told them that he had been
unwittingly drawn into forging bank statements by Bashir.
Weissler - who says he only realized a connection between the fake documents and the interview after it was broadcast
- told them he had previously approached the then Panorama editor Steve
Hewlett, who had assured him there was nothing to worry about. Hewlett died of
cancer in 2017, and having worked closely with him, the idea that he might have
colluded with Bashir in using fake bank statements is - to me - unthinkable.
And nothing I have seen suggests that Hewlett did. Nonetheless, were he alive,
Lord Dyson would have sought his answer to some searching questions?
Why, for example, having been first
alerted to the fake bank statements shortly after transmission, had Hewlett not
reported this to management?
The evidence suggests that Hewlett first
learned about the fake bank statements after Weissler faxed them to Panorama
producer Mark Killick with whom he had previously worked. Killick instantly
recognized the name "Penfolds Consultants" because the company had
featured in two previous Panoramas he and Bashir had made about the business
affairs of former England football manager Terry Venables. Why puzzled
Killick, should Penfolds be involved with paying an ex-employee of Earl
Spencer?
Killick confronted Bashir with the bank
statements in the BBC canteen. The meeting was brief and acrimonious, with
Bashir telling Killick it was none of his concern.
Lord Dyson said it "would have been
substantially changed if they had bothered to speak to Earl Spencer".
Dean recalls that Hewlett later assured
him that the information on the bank statements was true. He told Dean that
Venables had given up his interest in Penfolds and the name appearing in the
fake bank statements was merely coincidental. That assurance seems likely to
have come from Bashir himself.
Bashir's ever-changing story
At the Panorama Christmas party, former
producer Peter Molloy recalls Weissler looking very shaken as he arrived.
Weissler told Molloy his flat had been broken into, and the only thing missing
appeared to be two disks containing the bank statements. When Weissler reported
his concerns to BBC management, it became clear that Hewlett had not told his
line manager Tim Gardam anything about Bashir having faked bank statements.
"Tim was angry but sensible about it," recalled colleague Tim Suter
in 2001. Hewlett told them there'd been "nothing underhand in getting the
Diana interview".
However, a note by Tim Gardam of this
meeting, shows Gardam was still puzzled - why had Bashir gone to the trouble
and expense of creating such authentic-looking documents? He asked Bashir to
seek assurance from the Princess in writing that she'd not been shown them.
The following day, a handwritten letter arrived from Kensington Palace: "I
can confirm that I was not (not is underlined twice) put under any undue
pressure to give my interview. I was not shown any documents nor given any
information by Martin Bashir that I was not already aware of. I was perfectly
happy with the interview and I stand by it."
Diana's letter put to rest any doubts
management had that she'd been tricked or coerced. The BBC's greatest-ever
scoop was safe. For now.
What had been missed, however, was a big clue that Bashir was lying.
Bashir had already told Gardam in November that his first contact with Princess Diana had been in late September. This was mentioned in a "record of events" note by Gardam for Tony Hall. However, Gardam had also been told by Matt Weissler that he had created the bank statements in late August/early September, some three weeks earlier.
Bashir may have calculated that by naming
Diana as his confidential source, BBC management would feel inhibited about
checking this with her. And they never did.
He also deflected suspicion by admitting
that he falsely inserted the name "Penfolds Consultants" as one of
the two companies supposedly paying Spencer's ex-employee Alan Waller. His
excuse? Although Diana had supposedly told him Waller was being paid by an
intelligence services front company to spy on the Spencers, she hadn't known
the name. All she had known, said Bashir, was that the company was based in
Jersey. So he'd just inserted a dummy name because he knew Penfolds was based
in Jersey.
Asked by Gardam why he had compiled the
graphics in the first place, Bashir said it was simply to record and file the
information - an implausible reason for getting a graphic designer to work all
night, paying him £250 of license fee payers' money and getting the documents couriered
to Heathrow, when jotting down the details in his notebook would have sufficed.
Nonetheless, however improbable this may
seem today, Diana's letter appears to have reassured management. "All
could now relax for Christmas," said Suter at the time. "We had had a
scare, but we had got through it." But for Earl Spencer, the letter
doesn't exonerate the BBC. "Diana is dealing from a position of having
been lied to. She didn't know that the whole obtaining of the interview was
based on a series of falsehoods that led to her being vulnerable to this,"
he told me.
However, if management thought that was the end of it, they were mistaken. On 21 March, the Mail on Sunday told Spencer they were investigating how Martin Bashir had been introduced to his sister and secured his scoop interview. In order to convince Spencer of his credentials, the newspaper alleged that Bashir had shown him bogus security service documents about bugging phones at Kensington Palace. Clearly, the Mail was on to something but was wrong about the content of the documents.
Hewlett now had a golden opportunity to
question the Earl about Bashir's allegations and crucially whether he'd been
shown bank statements since, unlike Spencer, Hewlett knew they were fake. It's
not clear that Hewlett did ask Spencer about either point. Nonetheless, since
the Mail on Sunday had mentioned forgeries, Gardam instructed Hewlett to
question Bashir about this again.
Again, Bashir insisted he had not shown
his forgeries to anyone, including Spencer.
On 23 March, Gardam was telephoned and
doorstepped by the Mail on Sunday, so he telephoned Bashir: Had he shown the
documents to Spencer? Again, Bashir denied this to both Gardam and Hewlett.
Unconvinced, that afternoon, Gardam sought another assurance. Fearing imminent
publication, Bashir caved in, finally admitting that he had. It had taken four
attempts since December to get the truth out of Bashir.
A furious Gardam warned Bashir the BBC would have to consider its position.
The BBC investigates
Gardam was days away from leaving the BBC.
He wrote a handover note setting out all of Bashir's lies. It also records Tony
Hall as having agreed with Gardam that since Bashir had "misled us and…
appeared to have acted unethically and in breach of the guidelines" the corporation should conduct a "full inquiry".
But what transpired could hardly be
described as a "full inquiry" and was compounded by misleading
statements.
The Mail on Sunday had withheld
publication, but by April 1996 had firmed up their story and published Bashir's
fake documents. Approved by both Hall and Hewlett, the BBC issued a statement
saying the documents were "never connected in any way to the Panorama on
Princess Diana". Yet by now, both knew that Bashir had admitted showing the
statements to Spencer. They also knew that in a written statement, Bashir had
admitted showing the documents to Spencer in order to "foster" his
relationship with him. Therefore the documents manifestly were "connected
to the Panorama on Princess Diana".
In fact, Lord Dyson finds that the way the
BBC handled its public statements as a whole in this matter "fell short of
its high standards of integrity and transparency which are its hallmark".
As Anne Sloman, who had taken over as
Gardam's temporary replacement and Hall carried out their "full
inquiry", they never appear to have worked out that Bashir's central claim
- Diana was Bashir's source for the information in the fake graphics - was a
lie.
Like Gardam in December, neither Hall nor
Sloman appears to have spotted that Diana couldn't have been Bashir's source
because they hadn't met when Bashir commissioned Weissler to do the graphics.
But no such comparison appears to have been made. Lord Dyson does not hold BBC
management culpable for not spotting the discrepancy in dates. He does,
however, find that ahead of Bashir's first meeting with Diana on 19 September,
it is "inconceivable" that he was "locked in a relationship"
such that she would have been his source for the information in the graphics.
The chronology reflected what Sloman appears
to have thought about Panorama - "a viper's nest" seething with
jealous rivalries were how she later described the atmosphere to the late
Richard Lindley, himself a former Panorama reporter, for his book
"Panorama: Fifty Years of Pride and Paranoia" published in 2002.
"All felt they had a God-given right to leak to the press," said
Sloman.
Had Earl Spencer spoken out, his notes
would have blown apart Bashir's story - and the BBC would have been confronted
with one of its biggest crises. However, Spencer told me the reason he didn't
was that he didn't know the BBC had launched an inquiry and Princess Diana's
Panorama interview was "seen as very controversial. And if I had gone
against it while she was alive, then I didn't want to be seen to be undermining
her in any way."
Moreover, at the time, Spencer didn't know
the information in the bank accounts was entirely fake, or that Bashir had told
the BBC his sister was the source.
Also, the Mail on Sunday revelation quite quickly ceased to have traction. BBC press briefings that "jealous colleagues" were behind the paper's story had distracted from its allegation about Bashir's subterfuge, Spencer wasn't talking, and management hoped he never would. "The Diana story is now dead, unless Spencer talks. There's no indication that he will," wrote Anne Sloman in an internal BBC management document a fortnight after the Mail on Sunday story.
Bashir had already put Diana off limits for questioning by claiming her as his source for the "exact" payment sums to her brother's former head of security Alan Waller. Now in conversations with management, Bashir did the same to her brother claiming it was Earl Spencer himself who was his source for Waller's bank account details - something he'd not previously mentioned.
Bashir had changed his story again but it
seems not to have rung any alarm bells. Spencer only learned last autumn that
Bashir had accused him of misusing private information and categorically denies
there is any truth to it. In anger, he contacted the BBC urging they hold an
independent inquiry - hence Lord Dyson.
"In a credibility contest between
Earl Spencer and Mr. Bashir, Earl Spencer wins convincingly," says the
former Supreme Court judge.
In Lindley's history of Panorama, Anne
Sloman is quoted as saying Bashir was interviewed by Hall "at
length", with Hall at one end of her "grand desk" in
Broadcasting House, Bashir at the other. "Certainly, Bashir had forged
these documents. It was a stupid thing to do - it didn't get him the interview.
Why he did it, God only knows."
To those of a more curious disposition,
the circumstantial evidence pointed in only one direction: that these documents
were Bashir's way of getting his foot in the door of the Spencer family. That
is also the finding of Lord Dyson, who says: "I conclude that Mr. Bashir
showed the fake statements to Earl Spencer before there was any contact between
Princess Diana and himself."
Hall's statement made no mention of what he already knew by that point, that Bashir had shown the fake documents to Spencer and had repeatedly lied to his editor and to senior management. At the same time, Hall refers to "TRUST" (which Hall spelled out in capital letters) and "straight dealing" as "paramount" BBC values.
While Hall's statement to the governors
criticized Bashir for having been "incautious and unwise", he assured
his fellow managers he was "certain there had been no question of Bashir
trying to mislead or do anything improper with the document" - implying
nothing improper had taken place.
Lord Dyson comments: "To dismiss his
actions as no more than a mistake, unwise and foolish did not do justice to the seriousness of what he had done."
An internal document faxed three days
before the board of governors meeting shows that management seems to have
privately acknowledged Bashir had been in breach of journalistic ethics and BBC
rules: "Management will have to decide what action if any to take
privately or publicly about Bashir, what to do about his contract and how long
he should stay on Panorama."
However, Lord Dyson finds that the letter
was probably not sent to Bashir and further, that there is no record of a
reprimand on his employment records. Panorama's then-deputy editor Clive
Edwards told me he was "unaware of any supervisory order on Martin".
"It is difficult to imagine how any
such order could have been in force but not known to me as deputy editor, since
I would have been the person to supervise such an order."
Bashir remained with the BBC until 1998 when he left to join ITV.
The 'entire truth'
The most senior managers responsible for
BBC journalism appears to have swallowed a whale of a story, and in a 2005
interview for the BBC's Arena documentary series to celebrate the scoop's
10-year anniversary, Tony Hall unwittingly explained why: "Martin is the
sort of interviewer who works very hard at getting into your confidence."
It seems to have worked on everyone -
despite Tim Gardam's parting note to his management colleagues emphasizing the
need for the BBC to get to "the entire" truth of what Bashir had been
up to.
The only named whistleblower Matt Weissler would never again get any BBC work, Hall assured the governors. Weissler paid a heavy price - his freelance graphics business eventually collapsed so he left London and in his own words became "a bit of a drifter… I tried lots of other things, but at heart, I was always a television current affairs guy. Hall called Martin, a 'good and honorable man. I want him to reverse that because I'm the good and honorable man in this."
In response to Dyson, the BBC offered a
"full and unconditional apology" and said it would be writing to
"a number of individuals involved".
Weissler says the least the BBC could do
is include him in that list.
In overall charge of the BBC at the time
was director-general John Birt? He says the revelation that the BBC
"harbored a rogue reporter on Panorama who fabricated an elaborate,
detailed but wholly false account of his dealings with Earl Spencer and
Princess Diana" is a "shocking blot on the BBC's enduring commitment
to honest journalism; and it is a matter of the greatest regret that it has
taken 25 years for the full truth to emerge. As the director-general at the
time, I offer my deep apologies to Earl Spencer and to all others affected."
Our own investigation sheds some light on
this, however.
Lindley's book on 50 years of Panorama
quotes Sloman as saying that she, Hall, and Birt had a 90-minute meeting about
Bashir but it doesn't go into detail as to what transpired. Lindley's widow let
me search her attic for his original notes. I found that Sloman told Lindley:
"We concluded that fake documents had been going on as a general
practice" and that "our business creates monsters… never did Birt
express interest in covering his own back… Birt wanted to get to the bottom of
the matter."
I understand Birt has no recollection of
any such meeting, but that he thinks his reference to wanting to "get to
the bottom of the matter" refers to a meeting immediately after the Mail
on Sunday revelations. What briefing Birt may have been given on the results of
Hall's investigation before the boards of governors and boards of management is
unclear, except that Birt is said not to have been told that Bashir had
repeatedly lied. In fact, no evidence of Bashir having lied is mentioned in any
of the documents written by Hall or Sloman that have surfaced.
However, Lord Hall told Panorama that he
was "open and transparent with the director-general and with colleagues on
the board of management and I believe I gave them all the key facts...
throughout I discharged my responsibilities in good faith". For his part,
Lord Dyson finds that Hall "presented these facts to both the board of
management and the board of governors as if they were uncontroversial".
Lord Dyson continues: "And yet he knew (but did not tell the board) that they derived from Mr. Bashir's an uncorroborated version of the facts and that Mr. Bashir had lied on three occasions on a matter of considerable importance."
In a statement, Lord Hall said: "I
accept that our investigation 25 years ago into how Panorama secured the
interview with Princess Diana fell well short of what was required. In hindsight, there were further steps we could and should have taken following
complaints about Martin Bashir's conduct."
He said he was "wrong" to give
Martin Bashir the "benefit of the doubt, basing that judgment as I did on
what appeared to be deep remorse on his part".
Martin Bashir said in a statement that he
had apologized then, and did so again now for asking for bank statements to be
"mocked up".
But he reiterated that "the bank
statements had no bearing whatsoever on the personal choice by Princess Diana
to take part in the interview".
And he said he was "immensely
proud" of the interview, in which Princess Diana "courageously"
talked through the difficulties she faced. He said in it, she "helped
address the silence and stigma that surrounded mental health issues all those
years ago. She led the way in addressing so many of these issues."
The least that can be said is that Bashir
tried to con everyone. Others may say Bashir told management what they too
readily wanted to hear - to spare the corporation the ignominy of undermining a
truly global scoop. In 2016, Bashir was rehired by the BBC as religious affairs
correspondent. The announcement referred to his "track record in
enterprising journalism" and previous experience on "BBC religion and
ethics programs."
He resigned as the BBC's editor of
religion before the publication of the Dyson report.
Managing relationships 'cleverly'
The last word must go to Panorama's editor
at the time, Steve Hewlett. He too was interviewed for the BBC Arena
documentary marking the 10th anniversary of Bashir's scoop. I understand
Hewlett agreed to be interviewed provided he wasn't asked specifically about
the forged bank statements. Instead, he was asked how Bashir met Diana.
Arena didn't broadcast his answer and the
BBC refused to release it to us. However, we obtained a transcript that shows
the normally sure-footed Hewlett seeming to stumble: "I'm sure he told me
he was going to see her… look, he's a journalist, he does his business, I don't
follow him around all day, so you know, I've got a show to run… what,
precisely… how he did it, to be honest, I don't know."
He continued: "You know… he's an
operator, so he manages relationships very cleverly. I don't mean…dishonestly,
but he manages them cleverly."
Was Hewlett really still convinced by 2005
that Bashir had "managed" his relationship with Diana "very
cleverly" but not "dishonestly"?
The idea that Hewlett hadn't yet suspected
that Bashir got to Diana by deceiving Spencer sits uneasily with his careful
editorial eye.
Yet, however, Bashir got his scoop, it was
undeniably real and Princess Diana was, by several accounts, intent on telling
her side in the War of the Waleses. At the same time, the reporter to whom
Hewlett had entrusted this assignment turned out to be "rogue"
confronting him with an acute dilemma. Did Hewlett reconcile this by deciding
the authenticity of the scoop trumped an otherwise tainted process? I pose this
as a question, not an allegation because Hewlett is no longer here to answer
for himself. Yet it seems he was troubled by something.
It is 2004, a late-night bar in Sydney. By
chance, Hewlett bumped into a colleague Phil Craig, who had just produced a
documentary about Princess Diana. They talk and they drink. Having previously
worked on Panorama, Craig knew a little of the rumors. "We were coming at
this from different sides," he recalls "so with Steve there was a
sense of 'let's talk it all through. I came away that night with the very
strong impression that he thought there was a chance that one day the Bashir story would cause everybody a lot more trouble, that there was more to come out
about the background to the interview, that there was something that hadn't
gone away and was still lurking in the shadows."
That "something" turns out to be
a timebomb about public trust that the BBC tried to defuse 25 years ago, but
left it ticking. That bomb has now detonated.
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