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- Nearly three years after the Paris car crash that claimed
the lives of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed, the cover-up of that tragedy
has taken a deadly turn, prompting some experts to recall the pileup of
corpses that followed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Over
the course of four years, after President Kennedy was shot on Nov. 22,
1963, at least 37 eyewitnesses and other sources of evidence about the
crime, including one member of the infamous Warren Commission, which oversaw
the cover-up, died under mysterious circumstances.
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- On May 5, 2000, police in the south of France found a
badly burned body inside the wreckage of a car, deep in the woods near
Nantes. The body was so charred that it took police nearly a month before
DNA tests confirmed that the dead man was Jean-Paul "James" Andanson,
a 54-year-old millionaire photographer, who was among the paparazzi stalking
Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed during the week before their deaths.
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- From the day of the fatal crash in the Place de l'Alma
tunnel, that killed Diana, Dodi, and driver Henri Paul, and severely injured
bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, Andanson had been at the center of the controversy.
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- Mohamed Al-Fayed, the father of Dodi Fayed, and the owner
of Harrods Department Store in London and the Paris Ritz Hotel, has labelled
the Aug. 31, 1997 crash a murder, ordered by the British royal family,
and most likely executed through agents and assets of the British secret
intelligence service MI6--with collusion from French officials, whose cooperation
in the cover-up would have been essential.
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- At least seven eyewitnesses to the crash said that they
saw a white Fiat Uno and a motorcycle speed out of the tunnel, seconds
after the crash. Forensic tests have confirmed that a white Fiat Uno collided
with the Mercedes carrying Diana and Dodi, and that this collision was
a significant factor in the crash. Several eyewitnesses told police that
they saw a powerful flash of light just seconds before the Mercedes swerved
out of control and crashed into the 13th pillar of the Alma tunnel. That
bright light--either a camera flash or a far more powerful flash of a laser
weapon--was probably fired by the passenger on the back of the speeding
motorcycle. Both the motorcycle and the white Fiat fled the crash scene,
and police claim they have been unable to locate either vehicle, or identify
the drivers or the passengers.
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- - Andanson's White Fiat -
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- Andanson had been in and around Sardinia during the last
week of August 1997, as Diana and Dodi vacationed in the Mediterranean.
He joined several dozen other paparazzi, who were stalking the couple's
every move. He was back in France on Aug. 30, the day that Diana and Dodi
flew to Paris. And that is where the facts about Andanson's activities
and whereabouts get very fuzzy.
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- For reasons that he never revealed, sometime before dawn
on Aug. 31, 1997, less than six hours after the crash in the Alma tunnel,
Andanson boarded a flight at Orly Airport near Paris, bound for Corsica.
Andanson claimed that he was not in Paris earlier in the evening, when
the crash occurred, but he never produced any evidence, save a receipt
for the purchase of gasoline elsewhere in France (which he could have doctored
or obtained from another person), to prove he was not in the city.
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- His son James and his daughter Kimberly told police that
they thought their father was grape-harvesting in the Bordeaux region.
Andanson's wife Elizabeth claimed that she had been at home with her husband
all night, at their country home, Le Manoir de la Bergerie, in Cher, until
he abruptly left for Orly, at 3:45 a.m., to catch the crack-of-dawn flight
to Corsica.
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- Pressed on her version of the story, Mrs. Anderson later
admitted to reporters and police that her husband was constantly on the
run, and she could have been mistaken about the night in question. She
told {The Express}, a British newspaper, "It was always very difficult
to recall James's precise movements because he was always coming and going.
The family was very used to that and so never paid a great deal of attention
to the times he came and went."
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- What makes Andanson's precise itinerary the night of
the fatal crash so vital is this: He owned and drove a white Fiat Uno.
The car was repainted shortly after the Aug. 31, 1997 Alma tunnel crash,
and was sold by Andanson in October 1997. And, although the official report
of the French authorities investigating the crash concluded that Andanson's
car was not involved in the crash, French forensic reports made available
to {The Express} told a very different story.
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- One report in the files of Judge Herve Stephan, the chief
investigating magistrate in the Diana-Dodi crash probe, described the tests
on Andanson's Fiat: "The comparative analysis of the infrared spectra
characterizing the vehicle's original paint, reference Bianco 210, and
the trace on the side-view mirror of the Mercedes shows that their absorption
bands are identical." In laymen's terms, the paint scratches from
the Fiat found on the side-view mirror of the Mercedes were identical to
the paint samples taken from the matching spot on Andanson's Fiat.
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- The report continued: "The comparative analysis
between the infrared spectra characterizing the black polymer taken from
the vehicle's fender, and the trace taken from the door of the Mercedes,
show that their absorption bands are identical."
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- In short, despite the French investigators' endorsement
of Andanson's alibi, the forensic tests strongly suggested that his car
may have been {the} white Fiat Uno involved in the fatal crash.
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- John Macnamara, the Harrods director of security, and
a retired senior Scotland Yard supervisor of investigations, told reporters:
"Mr. Andanson had for some time been a prime suspect who had relentlessly
pursued Diana and Dodi prior to their arrival in Paris. We have always
believed that Andanson was at the scene and that more investigation should
have been done into his possible involvement."
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- Macnamara added, "We believe that his death is no
coincidence and that this is a line of inquiry which may help to discover
the truth. Was Mr. Andanson killed because of what he knew? That is a question
we want answered."
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- - The `Suicide' Soap Opera -
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- Needless to say, Andanson's death stirred up renewed
interest in Diana's death at a most inopportune time for the British royals,
and those in France who abetted the cover-up. Sometime in September, an
appellate court in Paris will rule on Al-Fayed's motion to order Judge
Stephan to reopen the crash probe, based on the fact that Stephan shut
down his probe before certain vital avenues of inquiry were fully explored,
and in contradiction to his own interim report, which cited several glaring
paradoxes in the evidence that remained unresolved at the point that he
abruptly closed down his investigation last year and blamed the crash on
driver Henri Paul.
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- For example, U.S. intelligence agencies, including the
National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense
Intelligence Agency, have all acknowledged, in response to Freedom of Information
Act queries, that they have thousands of pages of documents on Princess
Diana. Those documents, for the most part, remain under lock and key. In
addition to those documents and other relevant evidence, it has been recently
exposed that a secret U.S.-U.K. joint surveillance program, code-named
"Project Echelon," had apparently been involved in round-the-clock
monitoring of Princess Diana's telephone conversations, while she was at
home in England and travelling around the globe.
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- Until the contents of these U.S. government files and
electronic intercepts have been reviewed by French investigators, Al-Fayed's
lawyers have argued, the probe cannot be considered complete. And the U.S.
Justice Department continues to stonewall on indicting three Americans
who were involved in an attempted $20 million extortion of Al-Fayed in
April 1998, centered around purported "CIA documents" proving
that British intelligence assassinated Diana and Dodi. While the "CIA
documents["] seized from one of the plotters have been confirmed to
have been clever forgeries, questions remain about the accuracy of the
content of the documents.
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- In a flagrant effort to dampen interest in the Andanson
factor, the June 11 {Mail on Sunday}, a pro-royalist tabloid, ran a story
proclaiming "Wife's Affair Led to Paparazzi Man's Car Blaze Suicide."
The {Mail on Sunday} dutifully peddled the French government's cover story:
"The millionaire photographer who trailed Diana, Princess of Wales
in St. Tropez just days before her death, committed suicide when he discovered
his wife was cheating on him, French police have revealed.... The eccentric
millionaire--who was hailed by colleagues as one of the godfathers of paparazzi
photography, and who flew a Union Flag over his house to show his love
of Britain--was facing a family crisis at the time of his death."
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- {Mail on Sunday} reporter Ian Sparks quoted an unnamed
colleague of Andanson's at the Sipa Agency in Paris, making the preposterously
contradictory claim that Andanson "was desperate to save his marriage.
We would never have guessed he would do something so terrible." He
committed suicide to save his marriage! Right.
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- A French police spokesman told Sparks, "He took
his own life by dousing himself and the car with petrol and then setting
light to it."
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- Andanson's widow Elizabeth, and their son James have
rejected the idea that Andanson's death was suicide. Sources close to the
family told {EIR} that they have pressed French officials to conduct a
murder investigation into Andanson's death 400-miles from his home. The
sources dismiss the bogus "marital problems" story and additionally
report that Andanson was in high spirits over his new job with the Sipa
Agency.
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- - The Plot Thickens -
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- Just after midnight on June 16, just one week after Andanson's
death was first made public, three masked men armed with handguns, broke
into the Sipa office in Paris, shooting a security guard in the foot. The
three assailants dismantled all of the security cameras in the office,
and proceeded to enter several specific offices, clearly aware of exactly
what they were looking for. They made off with several cameras, laptop
computers, and computer hard drives.
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- Sipa's office employs more than 200 people, and operates
24-hours a day. The three invaders spent three hours in the office, holding
other employees hostage. According to one of the hostages, the men were
never concerned about the French police arriving at the scene. This hostage
was convinced that the three "burglars" were themselves working
for some branch of the French Secret Service. Furthermore, the source confirmed
that Andanson had worked for French and, undoubtedly, British security
agencies.
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- The owner of Sipa, Sipa Hioglou, has worked closely with
French intelligence, and, not surprisingly, has been one of the primary
sources of the "marital problems/suicide" cover story about Andanson's
death, "confessing" to French police and reporters that Andanson
had confided in him that he planned to take his own life. Hioglou, in the
days following the bizarre break-in and hostage siege of his office, also
told police that he suspected that the raid was done on behalf of a disgruntled
celebrity who was angry that her picture had been taken by a Sipa paparazzo
without her permission.
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- In stark contrast, other Sipa employees have told the
police that the idea that Andanson committed suicide was preposterous,
and that they suspect that the break-in was related to his death.
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- - What Is Going On? -
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- The Sipa raid, the obvious work of French Secret Service
assets, raises some very troubling questions. If Macnamara and Al-Fayed
are right, and Andanson was at the crash site on Aug. 31, 1997, and his
white Fiat was the car that collided with the Mercedes, what documentation
exists of his presence at the tunnel? What photographs exist of the crash
scene, and what do they reveal? Was some of this material seized from the
Sipa offices in the recent break-in, to assure that it never sees the light
of day?
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- Evidence has recently come to light, that within hours
of the crash, British and French secret service agencies carried out a
series of similar break-ins at the homes and offices of several photo-agency
personnel, in a desperate search [for] photos of the crash site that may
have been transmitted in the hours immediately after the Alma tunnel collision,
and before word of Princess Diana's death was made public.
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- {EIR} has obtained copies of sworn statements from two
London-based photographers, Darryn Paul Lyons and Lionel Cherruault, which
reveal that British intelligence was hyperactive in the hours immediately
after the Alma tunnel crash, desperately seeking any revealing photographs
that might have been spirited out of Paris.
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- Lyons identified himself as the "Chairman of `Big
Pictures,' ... an international photographic agency in London, New York,
and Sydney, specializing in obtaining and selling unique and exclusive
celebrity-based photographs." At 12:30 a.m. on Aug. 31, 1997, Lyons
received a phone call from a Paris paparazzo, Lorent Sola, who said that
he had a dozen photographs of the accident at the Alma tunnel. Sola offered
to electronically transmit the photos to Lyons immediately, and Lyons rushed
off to his office, receiving the high-resolution photographs at approximately
3 a.m. Lyons immediately began negotiating with several large news organizations
in the United States and Britain to sell the pictures for $250,000.
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- Lyons and Sola conferred after word of Diana's death
was made public, and they decided to withdraw the offer of the pictures.
Copies of the photos were placed in Lyons' office safe.
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- Sometime between 11 p.m. on Aug. 31 and 12:30 a.m. on
Sept. 1, the electricity at Lyons' office was mysteriously cut, although
no other power outages in the office building or the neighborhood occurred.
Lyons, convinced that either the office was being robbed, or bombed, called
the police. In his sworn statement, Lyons declared that he believed that
secret service agents had broken into his office and either searched the
premises or planted surveillance and listening devices.
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- Lionel Cherruault, a photo London-based journalist for
Sipa Agency, in his sworn statement, reported that, at 1:45 a.m. on Aug.
31, 1997, he received a call at his home from a freelance photographer
in Florida, informing him that he was expecting to soon be in possession
of photographs of the tunnel crash. Cherruault told the Florida contact
that he was interested. After word of Diana's death was announced, the
deal fell through.
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- But Cherruault, who was in contact with his boss at Sipa,
stated that, at approximately 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 1, while he and his wife
and daughter were asleep, his home was broken into, his wife's car was
stolen, and his car was moved. Computer disks used for transmitting photographs,
and other electronic equipment, were stolen, and the front door of their
home was left wide open. Even though cash, credit cards, and jewelry were
visible in the study where the burglars stole the computer equipment, none
of those valuables were taken, making it clear that this was not an ordinary
break-in. The next day, a police officer came to Cherruault's home and
confirmed that the break-in was clearly the work of "Special Branch,
MI5, MI6, call it what you like, this was no ordinary burglary." The
officer said that the home had "been targetted." The man, whose
name Cherruault was unable to recall, assured him "not to worry, your
lives were not in danger," according to the sworn statement.
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- The official police report of the Cherruault break-in,
which has been reviewed by {EIR}, confirmed that "The computer equipment
stolen contained a huge library of royal photographs and appears to have
been the main target for the perpetrators."
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- - Another Thread of the Cover-Up -
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- One of the other still-unresolved issues in the Alma
crash probe, three years after the fact, revolves around the medical evidence.
Al-Fayed has been battling in court in Britain for the right to participate
in the official inquest into the death of Princess Diana, arguing that
since both Diana and Dodi died in the crash, therefore he should be entitled
to officially participate in both inquests. The courts have preliminarily
ruled that he has the right to contest the Royal Coroner's rejection of
his participation in the Diana inquest, which will only occur after the
French appellate process has been completed, sometime later this year.
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- However, in April of this year, the attorneys representing
Al-Fayed received a copy of a suppressed memorandum, prepared by Professors
Dominique Lecomte and Andre Lienhart, two French forensic pathologists
working for Judge Stephan, suggesting that British authorities, including
the Royal Coroner, Dr. Burton, had interceded to conceal some aspects of
the official British autopsy. The two French doctors were in London on
June 23, 1998, where they met with British coroners Drs. Burton and Burgess,
forensic pathologist Dr. Chapman, and Scotland Yard Superintendant Jeffrey
Rees. They were given copies of the English autopsy report on Princess
Diana, but, according to their contemporaneous notes on the meeting, were
told that the document was provided for their "private and personal
use," and that it should not be included in the formal file of Judge
Stephan.
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- Any material in that official investigative file was
automatically made available to attorneys representing all the interested
parties in the French probe, including Al-Fayed's attorneys.
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- This two-and-a-half year suppression of the Lecomte-Lienhart
memorandum has once again raised serious questions about the legitimacy
of the "official" autopsy of the Princess of Wales, including
questions that arose at the time of her death, as to whether she was pregnant.
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- The mayhem surrounding the deaths of Diana and Dodi,
and now Andanson, raises questions about the circumstance in Paris on that
night in late August 1997--questions that the House of Windsor in general,
and Prince Philip in particular, have long sought to suppress. The time
may be fast approaching that the well-orchestrated three-year cover-up
is about to blow apart, and at least part of the truth about the death
of the "People's Princess" see the light of day.
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- And that is something that the Windsors and the mandarins
of MI6 may not be able to survive.
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- _____
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- JULY 3, (EIRNS) - EIR REVEALS HOW DIANA MURDER COVER-UP
HAS TURNED DEADLY.
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- The July 7, 2000 issue of the weekly Executive Intelligence
Review will feature an extensive dossier on the mysterious death of French
paparazzi James Andanson, one of the pivotal figures in the Aug. 31, 1997
fatal car crash in Paris, that claimed the lives of Princess Diana, Dodi
Fayed, and Henri Paul. Andanson's body was found in a desolate forest in
the south of France, burned beyond recognition, on May 5, 2000.
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- A week after his bizarre death, which French authorities
have attempted to label a "suicide," three armed masked men broke
into the Paris offices of the Sipa Agency, the photography agency where
Andanson was working at the time of his death, and stole computer disks,
laptops, and cameras. The three men were believed to be agents of the French
secret service, hunting for possibly incriminating photographs of the crash
site that Andanson may have been hiding.
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- The EIR story details the fact that Andanson, who owned
a white Fiat Uno at the time of the 1997 crash, was a prime suspect in
the Diana and Dodi wrongful deaths, yet French investigators accepted his
alibi that he was not in Paris at the time of the crash. Tests of the paint
and bumper scratches on his Fiat matched those on the side of the Mercedes
carrying Diana and Dodi, according to forensic reports contained in the
files of chief investigating magistrate, Herve Stephan. EIR also uncovered
other break-ins and surpression of crucial evidence by both British and
French intelligence services.
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- Nearly three years after the fatal crash, the true circumstances
are still being covered up, and the EIR story breaks new ground in exposing
that cover-up. This story is must reading for anyone who has been attempting
to get to the bottom of the Diana-Dodi deaths. As one specialist told EIR,
"The death of Andanson may very well signal a new, deadly turn in
the cover-up of the death of Princess Diana. It is reminiscent of the pile
of corpses that littered the landscape following the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy, when scores of individuals with knowledge about the President's
death, died under mysterious circumstances."
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- Free copies of this issue of EIR will be sent to those
Calling 1-888-347-3258 and saying they saw it on "Rense.com"
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