This Thursday, Scotland Yard will release their final report on the 1997 auto crash that killed Princess Diana and her loverman Dodi Fayed. The greater mystery may be why anyone still cares, unless it's an attempt to drum up buzz for a 10-year anniversary series of commemorative plates. Nevertheless, other than the fact that yep, it was a drunk driving accident, one little leaked nugget has the British press claiming that the "American secret service" was bugging Diana's phone line at her Paris hotel without knowledge or consent of British (or, one presumes, French) authorities. Again, seems unlikely due to the who-cares factor, but remember — this was after the end of the Cold War but before 9/11, when American spy agencies didn't have a real job, and thus were up to all kinds of crazy pointless crap. Plus, blogs hadn't been invented yet.

So speculation, such as it is, centers around which American spy agency would be keeping tabs on Princess Diana. "American secret service" is rather nonsensical; the actual U.S. Secret Service works security for the President (and veep) and has a minor stake in counterfeiting, so they wouldn't likely care, unless Diana was plotting to assassinate Bill Clinton. The CIA claims innocence, even going so far as to call the idea "rubbish" in a very British turn of phrase. This sort of thing was always more the FBI's bag since J. Edgar Hoover days, but they wouldn't have much reason to work in Paris, much less on a nonentity like Diana, as who really cared about her anti-land-mine philanthropy. Of course, Bill Clinton didn't want the land mines out of the Korean demilitarized zone, so perhaps Diana had motive to take him out, thus earning her a Secret Service bug after all. Tune in Thursday for more warmed-over details on the death of some lady.

Media probe mystery of possible U.S. spying on Diana [Reuters]
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