In the conversation, the woman, believed to be the Princess of Wales, likens her situation to that of a character in the popular British Soap opera EastEnders and expresses concern that she might be pregnant. Supporters of the Prince of Wales used the tapes in the media to smear the Princess of Wales, who had until then been widely regarded as the wronged party in the breakdown of the marriage. However, the publication of the tapes, if anything, had the effect of increasing sympathy for the Princess, the revelation that she followed a popular soap presenting the image of a far more worldly person compared with the formal and often detached public image of the Prince of Wales.
The fact that the tapes were the result of a bugging operation by a faction or group of individuals within the British intelligence agencies also reinforced popular beliefs that the Princess of Wales was being persecuted by the establishment. This view influenced the conspiracy theory that the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in Paris in 1997 was an assassination rather than an accident. Whatever the negative impact of Squidygate might have had for the Princess of Wales was soon balanced by the publication of taped phone conversations between the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles (Camillagate) which were very damaging to the public perception of his character and a source of much ridicule of him.
The Princess of Wales later admitted the affair with James Gilbey (which technically constituted High treason by both parties). As it now seems likely this adultery took place in 1989, the tapes would have been in existence for a number of years before publication. There is conjecture that Diana, knowing of the existence of the tapes, instigated contact with the journalist Andrew Morton. This resulted in the publication by Morton of the book Diana: Her True Story, and the start of the "War of the Waleses."
Reenan played them excerpts from a tape without having previously told them what he had recorded [:Squidgygate}}#endnote_Sun26Aug92]
Two days later the journalists were shown round Mr Reenan's home-made eavesdropping studio, which they described as follows: "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."
Reenan was quoted as saying he was "so nervous I just want you [the reporters] to take the tape away."
"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." [:Squidgygate}}#endnote_Sun25Aug92]
Cyril Reenan, a 70-year-old retired manager for the Trustee Savings Bank, regularly listened in on non-commercial radio frequencies for amusement with his wife, in much the same way that some people (illegally) listen to police frequencies using household radio sets.
Reenan was also a generous organiser of trips for disabled youngsters, and had previously been the recipient of a modest award from the Princess of Wales's Charities Trust [:Squidgygate}}#endnote_Jephson1].
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."
A special phone line allowed thousands of callers to hear the contents of the 30-minute tape for themselves, at 36 pence per minute.
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 [:Squidgygate}}#endnote_Jephson2].' "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."
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.
The conversation covered topics as diverse as the BBC Soap opera EastEnders, and the strange looks that Diana received from the Queen Mother: "It's not hatred, it's sort of pity and interest mixed in one [...] every time I look up, she's looking at me, and then looks away and smiles".
(Interestingly, in view of a fascination with Clairvoyance that was later to become well-known, Diana was also heard explaining how she had startled the Bishop of Norwich by claiming to be "aware that people I have loved and [who] have died [...] are now in the spirit world, looking after me.") [:Squidgygate}}#endnote_Sun24Aug92]
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.
Norgrove 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".
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. "
Norgrove claimed: "I wanted to speak out to 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 .")
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 ."
Jane Norgrove was adamant: "It was just me, recording a telephone conversation in my bedroom. Nothing more and nothing less than that ."
The Duke and Duchess of York had separated months before, and now all eyes were on 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 ."
Throughout 1991 and into 1992, Diana had been involved in secret co-operation with a previously little-known court correspondent called Andrew Morton. The result of this liaison was the scandalous book Diana: Her True Story, which - although obviously biased because of the close involvement of the Princess - revealed in graphic detail the previously-hidden disaster that the Wales's marriage had become. Diana's bulimia, suicide attempts and self-mutilation were spelt out unambiguously, as were Charles's relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, and the intrigues of Palace officials in attempting to contain the disintegrating Royal marriage.
Audiotel concluded that the presence of data bursts on the tape was suspicious. Data bursts ('pips' at intervals of approximately 10 seconds, containing information for billing purposes) would normally be filtered out at the exchange before Cellnet transmission. That these "pips" were present at all was therefore anomalous, but they were also too fast, too loud, and exhibited a "low-frequency [audio] 'shadow'," implying "some kind of doctoring of the tape," said Audiotel's managing director, Andrew Martin, in his firm's report. "The balance of probability suggests something irregular about the recording which may indicate a rebroadcasting of the conversation some time after the conversation took place ."
Within a week of the Times's announcement, a further independent analysis was carried out by John Nelson, communications consultant, with a "second opinion" being given by Martin Colloms, audio analyst for Sony International. There was a 50-Hertz hum in the background of the "Squidgygate" conversation, consistent with the effect of attempting to record a telephone conversation via a direct tap on a Landline, rather than from interception of a Cellular phone call.
Since Gilbey was known to have been speaking from a Mobile phone, inside a parked car, this left Diana's telephone line at Sandringham: "The recording must have been made as a result of a local tapping of the telephone line somewhere between the female party's telephone itself, and the local exchange." Furthermore, narrow-band spectrum analysis showed this 50-Hertz 'hum' to consist of two separate but superimposed components, "indicating a remixing of the tape after the initial recording." The clarity of the conversation was inconsistent with an off-air recording, and pauses in the speech were lacking in normal interference.
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
In other words, three independent expert analyses of the "Squidgygate" tapes showed beyond any doubt that the recorded conversation had been the result of a direct tap on Diana's landline. Since Sandringham, like all the Royal Palaces, has its own exchange, the person who installed the tap must have had access to the premises. The person or persons responsible had then edited and remixed the fruits of their eavesdropping, doctored it to look like a live transmission by adding data bursts, and had then rebroadcast it, four days after the recording, in the vicinity of a locally-known snooper's 20ft aerial.
The Sun, he said, had attempted to get him to give them the tape for nothing, and had told him he could be prosecuted for the recording: "I thought 'blimey, I've dropped myself right in it'. I was in a bit of a panic then."
Obviously Reenan held firm and finally received his money - although the Sun seems to have got the upper hand by using a classic tabloid "cloak-and-dagger" tactic to ensure that their unwitting subject wasn't initially available for further comment after the story broke: "For four days we were walking around in the dark because the Sun advised us to draw our curtains and not to touch our mail or newspapers." Jane Norgrove was also reported by the Mail to be "in hiding."
But the most startling claim was made almost in passing. From references made in the taped conversation, it was clearly evident that Diana and Gilbey were talking on New Year's Eve, 1989, the time at which the Sun claimed both Reenan and Norgrove had recorded it.
But now, Reenan informed the Mail that he had recorded the tape on "January 4, 1990". This was reported without comment by the Mail, directly contradicting the by-now nationally-known version of events.
A delay of four days between the call taking place and its interception is not ascribable to any known atmospheric phenomenon.
The next day, an energised Reenan made more surprising admissions, telling the Oxford Mail that certain parts of the "Squidgygate" conversation had been left out by the Sun. The Sun confirmed this to the Mail, saying that they had not made public certain sections of the recording, "for fear of damaging Diana irreparably."
"All the reporters in London seem to know what's on that tape," complained Reenan, "and they've all been to me to confirm it. Both my wife and I have said we can't remember, but we know what was in there." Reenan hinted darkly that there was "a lot about that tape" that had never been made public: "And I'm damn glad that it wasn't."
In 1997, it was revealed that the withheld section was a ten-minute discussion of masturbation or actual phone sex itself .
The Mail also issued a correction: the previous day, Mr Reenan had claimed that he had been paid £1,000 by the Sun. He now admitted it was £6,000, and he would be giving it to charity. The glaring anomaly of the date of the recording, 4 January 1990, was conspicuously not corrected .
The national media, however, were racing ahead with their coverage of the developing Royal split, and had already dropped Reenan. The Oxford Mail's article alleging press harassment, censored recordings, and - crucially - a revised date, were ignored. The Guardian quoted a Sun spokesman as saying that: "Our interest in the Royal story has moved on from Mr Reenan ."
Months after the story had broken, Reenan spoke to non-Sun reporters, expressing his anger over his treatment by the Sun: "When I read the transcript of the conversation between the Princess and the man, there were large chunks which I knew had not come from my tape." The Sun, it seemed, had produced a hybrid of Reenan's tape and Norgrove's, Reenan's tape having run out before the end of the conversation. As for the date of the recording: "I did not understand it. I know when I heard that call, and it was 4th January. I was not even at home on New Year's Eve ."
Jane Norgrove, in her efforts to dispel "all this nonsense about a conspiracy", simply raised new concerns when she claimed that she had wiped her tape after giving a copy to the Sun: "I want to make clear that the Enquirer's tape was nothing to do with me [...] I thought I'd better speak to the Sun again, in case people thought it was me ."
Who, then, sent the Enquirer a third copy of the conversation remains unknown. Furthermore, a fourth tape was sent anonymously to Richard Kay of the Daily Mail, in a plain brown envelope with a central London Postmark, during the same period .
Diana's careful efforts to make sure that Morton's revelations were not traceable directly to her - which included using a friend, James Coldhurst, to run Dictaphone recordings to Morton - had paid off.
Even Jephson was unaware of her actions till much later, stoutly defending her against whisperers: even though, as he adds, many in Palace circles went 'half-mad' trying to prove her involvement.
Andrew Morton's own speculation on the alleged tape-recordings of Diana's "damning" calls was added to the 1993 reprint of Her True Story: "Was Diana's telephone really bugged - and if so by whom - or was it an elaborate bluff aimed at extracting a confession from the Princess about her rumoured complicity in the preparation of my book? "
Jephson himself recalled that he had heard "a vague rumour about some tapes" before, but had "dismissed it as just another among so many ghastly whisperings, gobbets of disinformation and black propaganda that were by then my daily diet. This time, however, the rumours were true and "Squidgygate" burst upon us. "
On the same day as these remarks, members of the Commons all-party home affairs committee had their first meeting with Dame Stella Rimington, director general of MI5. Committee member John Greenway MP (Conservative) remarked that the recent Camillagate leak "strengthens the case for a parliamentary committee to have responsibility to oversee or scrutinise the work of the security services [..] I suspect that colleagues will want to ask how true the allegations [of MI5 complicity in the 'Camillagate' leak] are, and I suspect that she [Rimington] will refuse to tell us." No record exists of matters discussed at the meeting.
The first major 'Establishment' figure to question the official line on Squidgygate was Lord Rees-Mogg, the arch-conservative chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Authority.
He had proved an early proponent of the "rogue spies" school of thought in January 1993, when he used his Times Column to accuse elements within the British Security services of engineering the leaks. "All those tapes were made within a month," he wrote.
"The most likely explanation is that MI5 did it to protect the Royal family at a time of danger from the IRA. I don't think there was any sense of wrong-doing, but once they were made there was the danger of a leak ."
Examples of such eavesdropping and leaking follow.
A former Canadian intelligence officer, Mike Frost retired in 1992, after 20 years' service. Frost has told how Canada's 'listening' capabilities had been utilised by Margaret Thatcher, when Prime Minister, to spy on two [unnamed] cabinet colleagues.
"She wanted to find out not what they were saying, but what they were thinking," he said.
GCHQ, the government's listening post in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, was to have been used to carry out this surveillance, but they approached the Canadian intelligence services, because the operation was too politically sensitive. The spying was organised from the offices of Macdonald house in Grosvenor Square, London, the home of the Canadian High Commission.
The Canadian officer who led the spying operation personally drove to GCHQ to deliver the fruits of the snooping: tape-recordings of the ministers' communications over a three-week period. Frost did not know, or perhaps simply did not say, what use was made of these tapes .
During the "Spycatcher" controversy of 1987, the British Conservative government sought to suppress the Australian publication of the memoirs of Peter Wright (a former deputy director of MI5).
Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock suddenly found himself accused by the Conservative party of talking to Wright's lawyers.
Kinnock had indeed done so, via international telephone, but with a General election looming, Kinnock apparently did not want to be seen as some kind of "security risk", and so he declined to ask publicly how the Conservative party had come to know the contents of his private phone calls .
Her Majesty's opposition, the Labour Party, accused Clarke of irresponsibility, issuing a rather sardonic statement: "He has to show that he is taking these allegations seriously, otherwise he will be perceived as being unable to control an organisation for which he is responsible."
One of these was the annual report of the Interceptions Commissioner, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, who oversaw the intelligence-gathering practices of the security services. Excerpt follows:
"[Lord Bingham] was impressed by the scrupulous adherence to the statutory provisions [against misconduct] of those involved in the [intelligence-gathering] procedures."
In a clear reference to the "Squidgygate" affair, he commented on "the stories which occasionally circulated in the press with regard to the interceptions by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ," stating that such stories were, in his experience, "without exception false, and gave an entirely misleading impression to the public both of the extent of official interception and of the targets against which interception is directed."
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 ."
The "Squidgygate" and "Camillagate" tapes were both analysed by experts.
The "Camillagate" tape showed no signs of suspicious treatment, and appeared to be just what it was claimed to have been: a recording, "from air", of Charles and Camilla talking privately on 18 December, 1989.
Chance interception of high-level communication is not unknown: during the 1982 Falklands conflict, a radio ham in London had intercepted and taped a conversation between the then-Prime Minister's press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham and the Assistant Director-General of the BBC, in which the BBC was pressurised into sharing war footage with commercial rivals ITN .
The "Squidgygate" tape, however, showed clear signs of having been doctored and rebroadcast on 4 January, 1990; four days after its initial interception on New Year's Eve, 1989.
In 2002, Diana's former protection officer, Inspector Ken Wharfe revealed that the investigation had "identified all those involved, but for legal reasons I cannot expand further, and nor is it necessary to do so."
Wharfe adds, however, that: "It does [..] lend credence to the Princess's belief, so often dismissed by her detractors, that the Establishment was out to destroy her ."
This directly contradicts the statements of Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke, and conflicts with the statements of Lord Bingham of Cornhill - a Privy Councillor since 1986- whose report claims that the interception services behaved properly.
By 1995, claims her private secretary Patrick Jephson, Diana's "paranoia" had "reached new heights. She saw plots everywhere, [and] was obsessed with the thought that she was being bugged."
On one occasion, Jephson expressed his "polite mystification" - although he notes that "exasperation would have been nearer the mark" - that "none of these hidden microphones had actually been discovered."
Diana pulled up a carpet in an upstairs room at Kensington Palace, to show Jephson what she believed was evidence of bugging: fresh sawdust and disturbed planks: "She pointed silently at the sawdust, and nodded significantly." Jephson tried to reassure her that this was simply the result of the rewiring of all the Royal Palaces, following the 1992 fire at Windsor Castle, but Diana, after gesturing for him to remain silent, was evidently unconvinced .
A number of early editions of Sunday's papers were already in circulation, and these carried stories that can only be described as both surprising and worrying. The majority of these were simply tasteless jokes about the Princess's persistent "dumb blonde" image, which must have caused their editors some nasty moments. A piece of "psychological profiling" about the Princess's ever-present role in public life, for the Sunday Times, featured a large picture of Diana, and began with the unfortunate words "There is something missing from all our lives today."
The tabloid Sunday Mirror carried the story of how Palace Courtiers were ready to press the Queen to let the Royal warrants for Harrods lapse: "It would be a huge blow to the ego of store owner Mohamed Al-Fayed - and would infuriate Diana [...] but the Royal Family are furious about the frolics of Di, 36, and Dodi, 41, which they believe have further undermined the Monarchy."
"Prince Philip, in particular has made no secret as to how he feels about his [former] daughter-in-law's latest man, referring to Dodi as an 'oily bed-hopper'."
After noting that MI6 had prepared a report on the al-Fayeds, which would be presented at an early September meeting of the Royal policy think-tank, The Way Ahead Group, the paper quoted a friend of the Royals as saying: "Prince Philip has let rip several times recently about the Fayeds: at a dinner party, during a country shoot, and while on a visit to close friends in Germany. He's been banging on about his contempt for Dodi and how he is undesirable as a future stepfather to William and Harry. Diana has been told in no uncertain terms about the consequences should she continue the relationship with the Fayed boy. Options must include exile, although that would be very difficult, as - when all is said and done - she is the mother of the future King of England ."
Mirror columnist Chris Hutchins couldn't have been aware that events later that night would mean his words would be read in a very different light. He had written in the paper's "Confidential" feature:
"Just when Diana began to believe that her current romance with likeable playboy Dodi Fayed had wiped out her past liaisons, a new tape recording is doing the rounds of Belgravia dinner parties. And this one is hot, hot, hot! Labelled Squidgygate II, the tape is of a completely different conversation the Princess had with her sometime beau James Gilbey.
'It's absolutely outrageous,' says a woman friend who heard the tape last week, but was too polite to ask her hostess if she could make a copy for "Confidential". 'It's full of sexual innuendo, and far more explicit than the one we all heard before'."
Hutchins concludes: "I must remember to take it up with Diana next time we find ourselves on adjacent running machines at our West London gym."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the second "Squidgygate" tape disappeared from the media without trace, before it had even had a chance to appear, and no further information on its contents, origins - or its sudden surfacing in private hands after a gap of some seven years - seems likely to emerge.
The news agency's request for documents on Diana, held by America's National Security Agency, had been rejected, but the rejection notice itself revealed that a total of 1,056 pages of documents is held by the NSA, CIA, State department, and the Defense Intelligence Agency Dia.
APB quoted John Pike, an intelligence expert from the Federation of American Scientists, as saying that the NSA was "insatiably curious, and monitors everyone of interest outside the US".
A spokesman for the NSA, which holds 124 pages from "39 NSA-originated and NSA-controlled documents", declined to answer further questions about the documents, as did a spokeswoman for the CIA, which has at least two documents.
When asked why the Defense Intelligence Agency might be holding documents on Diana, Lieutenant-Colonel James MacNeil said he had "no idea why. All of our stuff is on military [matters]. Obviously she wasn't in the military .
After a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Guardian newspaper in 1999, the NSA told the paper that it was - and is still - holding reports under both secret and Top Secret classifications, and that: "these documents cannot be declassified because their disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security."
The agency said it also needed to protect its sources.
The NSA said:
"The reports contain only references to Princess Diana acquired incidentally from intelligence gathering. It is neither NSA policy or practice to target British subjects in conducting our foreign intelligence mission. However, other countries could communicate about these subjects; therefore, this agency could acquire intelligence concerning British subjects ."
This statement makes it sound as though the NSA's dossier on Diana consists of third-party information gathered almost by accident.
The NSA's spokesman may have been deliberately vague by relying on the ambiguity of the phrase "British subjects", which - read one way -- means British "citizens" (as long as a Monarch rules, all Britons are subjects of the reigning King or Queen), and - read another - means "matters of interest to the British state".
Either interpretation is demonstrably false: the NSA monitors both British interests and individuals. NSA surveillance of private phone conversations "between Diana and American friends" had been mounted "at MI6's request ."
US journalist Gerald Posner was played innocuous extracts from the NSA tapes of Diana's conversations in early 1999.
In February 2000, Wayne Madsen, formerly an NSA operative for 20 years, said that "undisclosed material held in US government files on Princess Diana was collected because of her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines."
Diana, and other international figures including Pope John Paul II and Mother Theresa of Calcutta, were all listened in on by the Echelon monitoring system, a world-wide monitoring network capable of processing millions of messages every hour.
"Anybody who is politically active,' said Madsen, 'will eventually end up on the NSA's radar screen ."
In December 1998, the French magistrate who investigated Diana's death, Herve Stephan, wrote to the American Secret Services to request the 1,056-page dossier of transcripted calls .
This request was refused a month or so later.