Princess Diana

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Weird… LONDON, England (AP)—New DNA evidence proves the driver of Princess Diana’s car was drunk on the night of her fatal crash in a Paris underpass in 1997, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported Saturday. The tests confirm that original post-mortem blood samples were from driver Henri Paul and that he had three times the French legal limit of alcohol in his blood, the BBC said, quoting from a documentary it will screen Sunday. . . . An official British report into the crash, to be published on Thursday, is expected to find that her death was an accident. The Observer newspaper said the report, compiled by former Metropolitan Police chief John Stevens, would conclude Paul was drunk at the time of the crash. But it is unlikely to stop the conspiracy theories. Among the report’s findings, the newspaper said, was the fact the U.S. Secret Service was bugging Diana’s phone on the night of her death without the approval of its British counterpart. The newspaper said U.S. officials had assured Stevens the secretly recorded conversations shed no new light on her death. It said Stevens’ report would also confirm claims that Paul had been in the pay of the French intelligence services. Two things worth mentioning here. First, why on earth would the Secret Service have been tapping Princess Diana’s telephone? Second, the CNN headline is: “Report: Diana’s driver was drunk.” That’s the same part of this story that’s being hyped all over the media. Why isn’t the whole “secretly recorded conversations” angle getting any play? Maybe because when she died, in 1997, a Democrat was in office? One Bill Clinton, to be specific? Because really, the media is only concerned about American intelligence agencies overstepping their bounds when Republican administrations are in office. Or so it appears. Here we have Secret Service caught recording the private communications of a foreign dignitary (one of our allies, no less) and the media issues a collective yawn. But Bush authorizes an NSA program that collects call data so that we can trace terror networks through their phone communications and the media carries on as though he punched an infant in the face. Double standards? You betcha.