Squidgygate
Squidgygate or Dianagate refers to the controversy over pre-1990 telephone conversations between
In 1992, The Sun publicly revealed the recording's existence in an article titled "Squidgygate" (the "
Recording and publication
The tape was published after it was allegedly accidentally recorded by a retired bank manager who was a radio enthusiast.[citation needed]
First eavesdropper: Cyril Reenan
In January 1990, two reporters from The Sun newspaper met Cyril Reenan in the parking bay of
Two days later the journalists were shown round Mr Reenan's home-made eavesdropping studio, in which "Above the scanners was a 1960s-style tape recorder with a microphone dangling down above the scanning equipment so that the couple could tape 'interesting' conversations".[citation needed]
Reenan was quoted as saying he was "so nervous I just want you [the reporters] to take the tape away." He added, "I didn't know what to do with it once I'd got it. I was stuck with it, and I was frightened of it," he was quoted as saying, claiming that if the paper had told him that "the tape was 'dangerous', I would have burned it or scrubbed it out."[3]
Reenan claimed that he had been so worried by the evident security breach that he had first thought of attempting to gain an audience with Diana: "I could have used a code-word, perhaps the nickname Squidgy... I was trying to save her face in a way." However, having thought on it "for a day, at least", Reenan decided that he "would not get to see Diana." So he "rang the Sun instead."[citation needed]
Publication
Published in The Sun on 23 August 1992, "Squidgygate" (initially called "Dianagate") was the front-page revelation of the existence of a tape-recording of Diana, Princess of Wales talking to a close friend, who later turned out to be Gilbey, heir to the eponymous gin fortune. Gilbey, who initially denied The Sun's charges, was a 33-year-old Lotus car-dealer who had been a friend of Diana's since childhood. Their conversation, which took place on New Year's Eve 1989, was wide-ranging. A special phone line allowed about 60,000 callers to hear the contents of the 30-minute tape for themselves,[4] at 36 pence per minute.[citation needed]
The tape begins in mid-conversation, with the man asking: "And so, darling, what other lows today?" To which the woman replies: "I was very bad at lunch, and I nearly started blubbing. I just felt so sad and empty and thought 'bloody hell, after all I've done for this fucking family...' It's just so desperate. Always being innuendo, the fact that I'm going to do something dramatic because I can't stand the confines of this marriage [...] He makes my life real torture, I've decided."[5]
The conversation covered topics as diverse as the
Diana expressed worries about whether a recent meeting with Gilbey would be discovered. She also discussed a fear of becoming pregnant, and Gilbey referred to her as "Darling" 14 times, and as "Squidgy" (or "Squidge") 53 times.[citation needed]
Second eavesdropper: Jane Norgrove
On 5 September 1992, The Sun announced that the same call had also been recorded by an Oxfordshire eavesdropper, 25-year-old Jane Norgrove, who claimed she had recorded the call on New Year's Eve 1989, but "didn't even listen to it. I just put the tape in a drawer. I didn't play it until weeks later, and then I suddenly realised who was speaking on the tape."[citation needed]
In January 1991, after sitting on the tape for a year, Norgrove approached The Sun. The paper made a copy of her recording, and offered her £200 for her time: Norgrove refused the money, claiming that she "got scared and didn't want to know about it any more."[7] Norgrove claimed: "I wanted to speak out now to clear up all this nonsense about a conspiracy [...] I'm not part of a Palace plot to smear the Princess of Wales." The Sun had initially published the opinions of "a senior courtier [who] claims the tape is part of a plot to blacken Diana's name" and the verdicts of other anonymous Palace staffers, who said that the tape was "a sophisticated attempt to get even by friends loyal to Prince Charles after Diana's co-operation with the book Diana: Her True Story, by Andrew Morton."[6]
Such speculation had not been confined to tabloid newspapers: William Parsons, of anti-surveillance consultants Systems Elite, remarked that the technical and atmospheric requirements for such a recording to be possible (both halves of a cellular telephone call, with equal clarity, when the callers were over 100 miles apart, in different network cells), were so improbable as to arouse suspicion: "My money would not be on somebody accidentally picking it up [...] There is more to this than meets the eye."[8]
Jane Norgrove was adamant: "It was just me, recording a telephone conversation in my bedroom. Nothing more and nothing less than that."[7]
Context and reaction
According to Tina Brown, Diana and Gilbey had first met each other before her marriage to Charles and reconnected in the late 1980s.[9] At the time of publication, the Prince and Princess of Wales, engaged in acrimonious pre-divorce proceedings, were involved in a protracted battle for public sympathy which became known as the "War of the Waleses". The Duke and Duchess of York had separated months before, and now all eyes were on Charles and Diana, the next king and queen, whose marriage had been the subject of rumour for years.
Speculation in the media—and in court circles—reached fever pitch. In his memoirs, Diana's private secretary Patrick Jephson recounts a fraught game of media one-upmanship by the feuding couple: secret briefings to friendly journalists, open collaboration with TV documentaries, and separate appearances at different public events on the same day were just some of the many strategies with which Charles and Diana attempted to force each other out of the limelight. Jephson recalls that the atmosphere at Kensington Palace at the time was "like a slowly-spreading pool of blood leaking from under a locked door."[10]
Throughout 1991 and into 1992, Diana had been secretly collaborating with a previously little-known court correspondent,
Analysis of the tape
In 1993, The Sunday Times published the findings of an analysis of the "Squidgygate" tape, commissioned from Corby-based surveillance specialists Audiotel International.
Audiotel concluded that the presence of
Within a week of the Sunday Times's announcement, a further independent analysis was carried out for the same newspaper by John Nelson of Crew Green Consulting, with assistance from Martin Colloms, audio analyst for
Since Gilbey was known to have been speaking from a mobile phone, inside a parked car, this left Diana's telephone line at
As well as the strong technical case he made against the recording, Nelson established two other salient points. The first was that Gilbey's mobile telephone was registered to the Cellnet network. Secondly, the Cellnet base-station transmitter site in Abingdon Town, the data channel of which was the only one receivable on Reenan's receiving system at the time of his visit, was not in service at the date of the alleged telephone conversation; it was first commissioned on 3 March 1990. It was therefore not possible that the purported recording could have been made off-air by Reenan or Norgrove in December 1989 or January 1990.
With regard to the data-bursts that had aroused the suspicion of Audiotel International, Colloms and Nelson stated: "We are forced to conclude that these data-bursts are not genuine, but were added later to the tape. They originated with a locally-made recording, and show that an attempt has been made to disguise a local tap by making it appear that it was recorded over cellular radio."
Telecommunications company Cellnet admitted that it had automatically conducted its own internal investigation after publication of the "Squidgygate" transcript, because Gilbey had been speaking on a Cellnet phone. "It is a very sensitive issue if a cellular network has been bugged," said Cellnet spokesman William Ostrom: "We wished to satisfy ourselves exactly what happened." Cellnet's inquiry, claimed Ostrom, had "replicated" the findings of Colloms and Nelson: Cellnet announced that it was "completely satisfied that we can dismiss this as an example of our network being eavesdropped."[12]
Government reaction
Suspicion about responsibility for the "Squidgygate" leak focused on the United Kingdom's security service, MI5. Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke said: "The security services are strictly controlled in their telephone tapping, and I know of no evidence whatever to indicate that they were involved." Such suggestions, he added, were "wild" and "extremely silly."
On the same day as these remarks, members of the
The first major "Establishment" figure to question the official line on "Squidgygate" was
A few days before Clarke's remarks, the
Political fallout
Before any investigation into "Squidgygate" or "Camillagate" had begun, Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke told the House of Commons: "There is nothing to investigate. [...] I am absolutely certain that the allegation that this is anything to do with the security services or GCHQ [...] is being put out by newspapers, who I think feel rather guilty that they are using plainly tapped telephone calls."[15]
The
Official position
Conservative MP Richard Shepherd called the official reports: "two old buffers saying that in their opinion the security services act with integrity." The National Heritage Secretary Peter Brook gave MPs "a categorical assurance that the heads of the agencies concerned have said there is no truth in the rumours."[16]
The Queen was so disturbed by the "Squidgygate" episode that she requested that MI5 conduct an investigation to discover the culprit or culprits. Since the motive could not have been financial, said the investigators—the only winners were the radio hams and the press—it must have been political.[17]
In 2002, Diana's former
See also
- Diana: Her True Story, a 1993 television film based on the publication of the same name by Andrew Morton, with Serena Scott Thomas as Princess Diana
- James Hewitt
References
- ^ Jephson, p. 334.
- ^ The Sun, 26 August 1992.
- ^ The Sun, 25 August 1992.
- ^ "The Royal and the Press". PBS. Retrieved 26 September 2022.
- ^ Jephson, p. 255, claims that despite initial rumours that the tape was a hoax, this comment was "an expression I had heard often enough to recognise its authenticity".
- ^ a b The Sun, 24 August 1992.
- ^ a b The Sun, 5 September 1992.
- ^ The Independent 26 August 1992.
- ^ Elser, Daniela (12 August 2019). "The infamous taped phone call behind Squidgygate". news.com.au. Retrieved 3 August 2022.
- ^ The Sunday Times, 16 September 2000.
- ^ The Sunday Times, 17 January 1993.
- ^ The Sunday Times, 24 January 1993.
- ^ a b 'The Times', 11 January 1993.
- ^ "The Camillagate Tapes" Archived 1 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine, 18 December 1989, phone transcript, Phone Phreaking
- ^ The Guardian, 18 January 1993.
- ^ The Guardian, 13 May 1993.
- ^ Adams, p. 112-113.
- ^ Wharfe, pp. 174–5.
Sources
- Adams, James: The New Spies: Exploring the Frontiers of Espionage; ISBN 0-09-174063-0.
- ISBN 0-571-14757-7.
- Dorril, Stephen, and ISBN 1-872180-68-X.
- Jephson, Patrick: Shadows of a Princess; ISBN 0-00-711358-7.
- ISBN 1-85479-128-1.
- Wharfe, Ken: ISBN 1-84317-005-1.