Monday, December 11, 2006

Listening In

The British newspapers are all a-flutter today, because of reports that the US "secret services" were listening in on Princess Diana's telephone conversations. According to the British newspaper, the Evening Standard (via Drudge), the Americans were most interested in H.R.H's conversations with US "tycoon" Theodore "Teddy" Forstmann.
Lots of tabloid value here, and fuel for various conspiracy theories, but I don't find it particularly amazing: US intelligence taps lots of foreign telephone conversations.
I wonder if the Princess was the primary target, or whether Mr. Forstmann was perhaps of more interest ? Probably the legwork for the tapping was done by the NSA, maybe via satellite, but which US agency was interested ?
UPDATE: See Former Spook's discussion over at In From the Cold. Very well done.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

when did she die?
august 31, 1997
boy i bet the moonbats will be all over bush for this one.
1997.
bush did it.
you know he did.

El Jefe Maximo said...

It appears, from Wikipedia and Fundrace, that Mr. Forstmann's poltical connections might be pretty Republican. . .which is on reason why I wondered who (whom ?) the listeners, (in 1997) as you point out, were really intereted in.

To be sure, a lot of foreign tapping by the US gov. goes on.

Anonymous said...

Let me get this right -- Clinton was listening to Diana while Atta was planning 9/11 and the Libs are against listening in?????

Anonymous said...

anon@6:03 pm

oh no sir/mam you are completely mistaken.
this occurred in 1997.
bush did it.
it helps if you put your tinfoil back on.
you might want to grap a small child out of a closet and send them back to cuber while you are at it.