Back on Monday I posted on evidence from Britain indicating that Princess Diana had been bugged by a U.S. intelligence service (possibly the Secret Service).  In that post I noted that Princess Diana had been dating rich Republican mover-and-shaker Teddy Forstmann, which may have been the reason the bug was authorized by the Clinton administration

Today the New York Daily News has information indicating that Forstmann himself thought he had been bugged by the Feds

A source close to Forstmann told the Daily News yesterday that Diana may have been overheard while traveling with Forstmann on his private plane, which Forstmann believed was bugged by the feds to listen in on his rich and powerful friends

She asked Forstmann to help her find a summer place in the Hamptons, the source said. The princess later called to tell Forstmann to drop the search

“Don’t bother [trying to find me a place],” she told Forstmann, according to the source. “There’s no point in looking. They won’t let me come. It’s a security hazard.”

Some Brits were skeptical that the Americans were worried about Diana’s safety in the Hamptons

“If this is true, there needs to be some explanation,” said Andrew MacKinlay, a Labor Party member of Parliament. “That’s a feeble excuse. They’ve got to do better than that.”

I agree with Mr. MacKinlay.  But aside from why Princess Di wasn’t allowed to travel to the Hamptons, there are a lot of other questions that need answered as well.  Such as why her phone was bugged in the first place.  What possible national security interest did that bug serve?  And if it didn’t serve a national security interest, then what interest did it serve?  Was it targeting the well-connected Ted Forstmann who was a Clinton administration opponent and potential candidate against Hillary for the Senate in New York?  And how is this any different from what President Bush did with the NSA, something the Democrats call “domestic spying” (though the difference is that Bush monitored people suspected of terrorism, neither Diana nor Forstmann have any such connections):

Forstmann is what is known in the intelligence/legal world as a “U.S. person.” If there were a conversation between him, in the United States, and Diana, outside the United States, it would resemble, at least in structure, the conversations between people in the United States and those in foreign countries that have been at the center of the controversy over what President Bush calls the terrorist-surveillance program and what Democrats call “domestic spying.” (The difference, of course, would be that the Bush administration says it has listened to conversations involving people with known connections to a foreign enemy, al Qaeda; neither Diana nor Forstmann, a public-minded financier who was quite active in Republican politics, appears to fit a comparable description.)

Somebody needs to get to the bottom of this, but our major media outlets here in America just don’t seem that interested in asking some of these questions.  Of course, were this tapping of Princess Di’s phone to have happened under the Bush administration I suspect we’d have a whole new ballgame on our hands

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