Hearing transcripts

28 February 2008 - Morning session

1 Thursday, 28th February 2008
2 (9.30 am)
3 (Jury present)
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Burnett, I think we begin by
5 reading the evidence of F, is that right?
6 MR BURNETT: We do sir. Thank you for reminding me, I had
7 completely forgotten.
8 Sir, this is the evidence of Witness F contained in
9 a statement of 12th January 2005 augmented in one
10 respect by information she gave to Mr Smith,
11 the solicitor to the inquest, on Tuesday.
12 Witness statement of F (read)
13 "From the end of 1991 until 1994, I was
14 a PA/secretary in a particular section in SIS and for
15 a period of time, I worked for witness A. At some time,
16 not before 1992, known because of the change of relevant
17 controller then, I typed, for witness A, a proposal
18 handwritten by him referring to X."
19 Sir, I should interpret, that is not the X we saw,
20 I hasten to add.
21 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: No.
22 MR BURNETT: "The proposal given to me by witness A was
23 written on A4 paper and was at least one side in length.
24 "I cannot recall how this was physically given to
25 me. Usually drafts would be left in my tray for action

1

1 but witness A could have handed it to me because of its
2 sensitivity. I remember that the proposal suggested
3 assassinating X, but I cannot remember any of the
4 detail. I was at that time familiar with the name X and
5 recognised it in the proposal. I am 100 per cent
6 certain that this proposal did not relate to Milosevic.
7 "I cannot specifically remember but am confident
8 that I would have followed standard procedure of taking
9 a numbered tally sheet, logging the number in the minute
10 book, typing the minute -- this I specifically do
11 remember -- which was printed out on white minute paper
12 and attaching the tally sheet to it. I am certain in
13 this case that it was a white minute and not a pink
14 memorandum. I would have then removed the relevant part
15 of the tally sheet to send it to the registry for
16 subsequent registration and have given the minute to
17 witness A to sign, along with the tally sheet and
18 original draft.
19 "Once witness A had signed the minute, I would have
20 shredded the original handwritten draft. I was
21 surprised when I typed the proposal because I had never
22 read or seen anything like it before. I cannot remember
23 what witness A said to me about it.
24 "Part of my role was to forward minutes but in this
25 case, I cannot now recall how it was forwarded. Very

2

1 shortly after typing this, I recall witness H coming
2 into my office saying that the minute had to be deleted
3 and shredded. I deleted it from my computer system
4 whilst H watched me. It was not a computer as such, but
5 a sort of early word processor, just one step up from an
6 electronic typewriter really. It was not connected to
7 anything like a network. I do not know if it had a hard
8 drive.
9 "The shredder was in my office and either witness H
10 or myself, I cannot recall who, shredded the minute.
11 This would have left the tally sheet. I would have
12 reallocated the tally sheet and Tippexed over
13 the previous information. There are formal procedures
14 for destroying tally sheets and this has to be done by
15 the registry. I would have retrieved the registration
16 part of the tally sheet from the tally box in my office.
17 "To my knowledge, the minute never left the section
18 and was not registered. I remember that this was
19 a topic of conversation for some time afterwards because
20 of the furore caused in the section by the minute.
21 I have never read Richard Tomlinson's book or manuscript
22 and therefore cannot make any comment on any links
23 between what he has written and witness A's minute."
24 And that is signed by Witness F and witnessed by
25 a police officer.

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1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Thank you.
2 MR BURNETT: Sir, the next witness is Sir John Adye.
3 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I call Sir John Adye then.
4 SIR JOHN ADYE (sworn)
5 Questions from MR BURNETT
6 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Would you prefer to be seated,
7 Sir John? It is entirely up to you, whichever you would
8 prefer.
9 A. I would prefer.
10 MR BURNETT: Now, Sir John, as you know, my name is
11 Ian Burnett and I shall be asking you questions first,
12 on behalf of the Coroner. Thereafter, others who
13 represent interested persons in these inquests may also
14 ask you questions.
15 Can I deal first with formalities? What is your
16 full name?
17 A. John Anthony Adye.
18 Q. And is it right that you were director of the Government
19 Communication Headquarters?
20 A. Government Communications Headquarters.
21 Q. I am so sorry.
22 A. I was.
23 Q. That was between July 1989 and July 1996.
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Now, Sir John, I think you have made a statement in

4

1 connection with these proceedings which is dated
2 13th February of this year, is that right?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. And to that statement, you exhibited a number of
5 documents?
6 A. I did.
7 Q. And do you have copies of those in front of you?
8 A. I do.
9 Q. Additionally, it is right, isn't it, that three further
10 documents were produced by GCHQ following a review of
11 files by the Coroner, and you have those three documents
12 as well?
13 A. I do.
14 Q. Can I start by dealing with some very general questions?
15 First, about your time at GCHQ, and a little bit
16 about GCHQ itself. Is it right that you joined
17 the organisation in 1962?
18 A. That is correct.
19 Q. And that in the years between your joining and becoming
20 director of GCHQ, you held a wide variety of
21 appointments within the organisation?
22 A. I did.
23 Q. To whom were you responsible and is any director of GCHQ
24 responsible for the running of the organisation?
25 A. Any director of GCHQ is responsible to the Foreign

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1 Secretary for the running of the department.
2 Q. And in broad terms, what is the function or what are
3 the functions of GCHQ?
4 A. The functions of GCHQ are -- if I refer here, it is
5 probably easiest if I refer to my evidence I think.
6 Q. You give a broad outline in paragraph 1.
7 A. Yes. Well, it was necessary for me to ensure that GCHQ
8 met the requirements from Government to provide secret
9 intelligence derived from the interception of
10 communications and to provide information security
11 advice.
12 Q. And was it also your responsibility as director to
13 ensure that GCHQ complied with the requirements of
14 United Kingdom law?
15 A. It was indeed.
16 Q. Sir John, we have already heard from Sir Richard
17 Dearlove a little bit about the law applying to SIS and
18 you will be pleased to know that I am not looking to you
19 for a disquisition on the law but just to locate, if I
20 may, the statutory regimes that applied, is it right
21 that the Interception of Communications Act 1985
22 governed the circumstances in which interception could
23 be undertaken lawfully?
24 A. Indeed it did. In relation to public telecommunications
25 networks in the United Kingdom.

6

1 Q. So one of your responsibilities was to ensure that GCHQ
2 complied with the provisions of that piece of
3 legislation?
4 A. It was.
5 Q. And then, as Sir Richard showed us last week,
6 the Intelligence Services Act 1994 placed SIS on
7 a statutory footing and it did the same for GCHQ?
8 A. It did.
9 Q. And in those circumstances, the organisation was subject
10 to judicial oversight through commissioners whose
11 functions were also identified in those pieces of
12 legislation.
13 A. They were.
14 Q. Now we will come a little later in your evidence,
15 Sir John, to a report by the Interception Commissioner
16 which covered the year 1992, but I will park
17 the regulation there, if I may.
18 You are aware, I think, that issues have arisen in
19 the course of these proceedings which relate to GCHQ's
20 activities and that the first concerns an allegation
21 that GCHQ intercepted the communications of members of
22 the Royal Family, specifically in 1989. And that is one
23 of the issues that you cover in your statement and will
24 cover in evidence. That is right, isn't it?
25 A. It is.

7

1 Q. Secondly, that an issue has been canvassed surrounding
2 analysis carried out by GCHQ concerning those alleged
3 interceptions?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And that too, we shall cover.
6 To assist you, Sir John, I am picking things up now
7 at paragraph 4 of your statement. When did you first
8 become aware that there was press speculation and
9 coverage that certain conversations involving members of
10 the Royal Family were alleged to have been intercepted?
11 A. In -- around late summer/early autumn of 1992,
12 I believe.
13 Q. And was it right that the press coverage at that time
14 concerned two quite separate conversations, one
15 involving the Prince of Wales and
16 Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles and the other,
17 the Princess of Wales and Mr James Gilbey.
18 A. I believe it did.
19 Q. And were allegations made in the press that GCHQ was
20 responsible?
21 A. Not as I recall at that point, in 1992, but
22 subsequently, early in 1993 those allegations were made.
23 Q. Now when the allegations were made, what was your
24 initial reaction?
25 A. That this was -- I could not believe that these

8

1 allegations were true. From my knowledge of the work of
2 GCHQ, the requirements put upon us and so on, and indeed
3 the circumstances of the alleged interception of
4 the conversations which had taken place.
5 Q. Would it be right that, if such conversations had been
6 intercepted in any way by either GCHQ or the other
7 intelligence agencies, it would have been unlawful,
8 because it was outside the scope of any of your
9 functions?
10 A. It would have been unlawful for anybody to intercept
11 those communications on a public telecommunications
12 network.
13 Q. And were you able to satisfy yourself, when these
14 allegations became public, that GCHQ was not
15 responsible?
16 A. In due course, I was. Although, as I have said, I found
17 it very difficult to believe that we could possibly have
18 had anything to do with it, I thought it prudent and
19 necessary to ask some questions of my colleagues in
20 the department about the nature of the communications
21 which were alleged to have been intercepted, to ensure
22 that in fact we had had nothing whatsoever to do with
23 it.
24 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You refer to "public
25 telecommunications network". Does that include mobile

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1 to landline and mobile to mobile?
2 A. It does indeed.
3 MR BURNETT: So it is right, is it, that such interception
4 simply could not have been done in accordance with
5 the requirements placed on GCHQ to produce intelligence
6 for the benefit of the Government, simply could not have
7 been within that?
8 A. It could not have been done without a warrant.
9 Q. And intercepting the Royal Family is simply not within
10 the scope of the intelligence that the Government was
11 seeking?
12 A. Indeed it was not.
13 Q. And there was no such warrant?
14 A. And -- I am sure there was no such warrant.
15 Q. You were concerned, no doubt, to satisfy yourself that
16 such eavesdropping or bugging, whatever one calls it,
17 had neither happened intentionally nor unintentionally?
18 A. I was satisfied.
19 Q. So you made those inquiries within GCHQ?
20 A. I did.
21 Q. Your having been satisfied of that, I am now looking at
22 paragraph of your statement, Sir John, is it right that,
23 by the end of the second week of January 1992,
24 the intensity of the press coverage was such that
25 the Government decided exceptionally to depart from

10

1 the policy of neither confirming nor denying individual
2 allegations involving the intelligence agencies?
3 A. That is correct, sir, except it was 1993.
4 Q. I am sorry, did I -- which year did I say. I am sorry,
5 that is my mistake: so, 1993.
6 As a result, what steps were taken to enable
7 the Government to deal with the allegations?
8 A. There were at that point briefings of ministers for
9 appearance in Parliament to answer Parliamentary
10 questions. And those briefings were done in the normal
11 way in which Prime Minister's Questions and other
12 ministerial briefings are arranged. As part of that,
13 they were briefed that they could truthfully say that
14 none of the security and intelligence agencies had been
15 intercepting the communications of the Royal Family.
16 I paraphrase the actual words.
17 Q. Was it the original intention that the Prime Minister
18 would make a statement on 14th January 1993 at Prime
19 Minister's Questions?
20 A. I believe it was.
21 Q. But in the event, on that day, it is right, isn't it,
22 that there was a debate in the House of Commons
23 concerning primarily a report into privacy that had been
24 prepared by Sir David Calcutt and in the course of that
25 debate the issue was raised with the Secretary of State

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1 by a backbench MP?
2 A. Indeed.
3 Q. And the Secretary of State was Peter Brooke, who was
4 Secretary of State for National Heritage?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. And on that day, 14th January, did he provide an answer
7 to the question which you have exhibited as JAA2 to your
8 statement?
9 A. Yes, he did.
10 Q. I wonder whether we might just have that up on the
11 screen?
12 Mr Foley, could you go to Mr Brook's answer in
13 the middle of the page. [INQ0060675]
14 Now, as one can see from his response, he was
15 dealing with a series of questions, three which had been
16 rolled up into one by the member for Bolsover, who was
17 Dennis Skinner. Did he say this, at the end of that
18 answer, in dealing with the third:
19 "On the honourable Gentleman's technicolour
20 observations about MI5 and GCHQ, I give the House
21 a categorical assurance that the heads of the agencies
22 involved have said that there is no truth in
23 the rumours, whose only --"
24 And then he was interrupted. That is what he said,
25 is it?

12

1 A. He did indeed.
2 Q. And was he reporting what to your knowledge had been
3 conveyed on behalf of GCHQ and also the other agencies,
4 namely MI5 and MI6?
5 A. I am sure he was, although the words are slightly
6 different from what may have been done. That is partly
7 because of the way his answer was interrupted.
8 Q. And then a little later on, his next observation, if one
9 goes down this page a little way, after the Speaker's
10 intervention, Mr Brooke was dealing with an observation
11 that he had set a precedent by denying, rather than
12 neither confirming nor denying, and then he said this,
13 didn't he:
14 "To return to the question asked by the honourable
15 Member for Bolsover, the only evidence as to why those
16 rumours began was that the technical difficulties were
17 beyond any other organisation, but unfortunately,
18 the technical difficulties are not beyond any other
19 organisation."
20 So that is the explanation that he gave on 14th
21 January.
22 A. Indeed he did.
23 Q. Now, matters were not left there, I think. Am I right
24 in saying that there was continued speculation about
25 the identity of those who might have intercepted calls

13

1 of the Royal Family and so, quite exceptionally, your
2 organisation, GCHQ, put out a press release to deal with
3 that?
4 A. We did.
5 Q. And in your statement, you describe that as
6 "unprecedented". So is that the only time in your time
7 there that it was done?
8 A. In relation to anything to do with the operational work
9 of GCHQ, yes.
10 Q. Now, you produce that press release at JAA3. I wonder
11 if we could go through this? [INQ0060676]
12 I would be grateful, Sir John, if you could simply
13 read it into the transcript. One sees the date at the
14 bottom, 14th January, so it is the same day.
15 A. It is:
16 "Press release: As the Heritage Secretary made clear
17 in the House of Commons this afternoon, the heads of all
18 the security and intelligence agencies have given
19 categorical assurances denying any involvement in
20 intercepting, recording or disclosing telephone calls
21 involving members of the Royal Family. However, there
22 are certain incorrect statements in this evening's
23 Evening Standard article which call for comment by GCHQ.
24 "2. Firstly, the Interception of Communications Act
25 1985 applies to any interception of calls on a public

14

1 telecommunications network, whether by any of the
2 security and intelligence agencies or by the police, or
3 by anyone else. It is incorrect to claim that GCHQ is
4 in some way able to circumvent the Act. GCHQ abides by
5 the provisions of this and all other UK laws.
6 The Commissioner appointed under the Act has access to
7 all relevant papers and, in response to earlier
8 allegations of illegality by GCHQ, reported that there
9 was not the slightest truth that the law was being bent
10 by them.
11 "3. Secondly, the Director of GCHQ is responsible
12 to the Foreign Secretary for all aspects of GCHQ's work,
13 and warrants for interception are signed by
14 the Secretary of State. It is simply untrue to say that
15 there is no ministerial control of GCHQ's activities."
16 Q. So that went out on 14th January. But it is right,
17 isn't it, that there were further statements made by
18 ministers to Parliament reiterating the denial?
19 A. That is correct.
20 Q. Now, I shall not take you, Sir John, through all of them
21 laboriously but might we look at a statement made by
22 the minister of the day in answer to the written
23 question which you produce at JAA4. This is a report
24 that the jury have seen before and one sees this.
25 Mr Alton asked if he, the Prime Minister:

15

1 "... will make a statement concerning Her Majesty's
2 Government's policy regarding the tapping of telephones
3 of members of the Royal Family or their personal
4 friends."
5 And the answer by the Prime Minister was:
6 "The interception of communications during their
7 transmission by means of a public telephone system is
8 subject to the provisions of the Interception of
9 Communications Act 1985. The Government have accepted
10 Sir David Calcutt's recommendation to consider whether
11 the legislation adequately protects private telephone
12 calls. As my right honourable Friend, the Secretary of
13 State for National Heritage assured the House in his
14 statement on 14th January, there is no substance to
15 rumours about the involvement of the security and
16 intelligence agencies in interception of
17 the communications of the Royal Family."
18 So that is the Prime Minister's reiteration of the
19 same point.
20 A. Indeed, that is what he said.
21 Q. Without necessarily going to them, is it right that on
22 two occasions in the House of Lords, Earl Ferrers, who
23 was a Minister of State at the Home Office, reiterated
24 denials to the same effect, that is to say on 3rd
25 February 1993 and 23rd February 1993, both of which you

16

1 exhibit?
2 A. He did.
3 Q. And also that in May 1993, that is to say 13th May 1993,
4 in the course of a debate on criminal justice policy,
5 the issue resurfaced and the then Home Secretary,
6 Kenneth Clarke, similarly issued denials in what might
7 be described as his customary rather rumbustious way?
8 A. He did.
9 Q. And that too you exhibit. I am moving on, Sir John, so
10 you know where I am in your statement, to paragraph 15.
11 You have mentioned that the work of GCHQ was
12 overseen by the Interceptions Commissioner and we have
13 heard a little bit about him already. It is right,
14 isn't it, and this you tell us in paragraph 6 of your
15 statement that the Interception Commissioner, Lord
16 Justice Bingham as he then was, visited GCHQ on 4th
17 January 1993 as part of his regular programme to
18 discharge his oversight functions?
19 A. He did.
20 Q. And you believe that it is likely that the issue
21 concerning the alleged interception of communications by
22 the Royal Family is a subject that is likely to have
23 come up in discussion between you and him?
24 A. I believe that is the case.
25 Q. Is it right that you received a letter written by

17

1 Sir Thomas's secretary on 2nd February 1993 concerning
2 that issue?
3 A. I did.
4 Q. And that is one of the additional documents that have
5 been produced and I wonder if we might have that on the
6 screen?
7 I think, Mr Foley, there are some names in it at the
8 end which with luck have been redacted. [INQ61064]
9 Here we see a letter, 2nd February 1993. This is
10 written on behalf of the Commissioner as we see at the
11 top.
12 The request was as follows:
13 "The Interception of Communications Commissioner is
14 currently drafting his report, as you will be aware. He
15 is conscious of the fact that a great deal of press
16 interest has evolved in recent weeks into the affairs of
17 certain agencies, who it alleges may have been engaged
18 in the interception and recording of telephone
19 calls involving members of the Royal Family.
20 The Commissioner wishes to mention this matter in his
21 annual report, and to give an assurance that there has
22 been no such interception on the part of yourself and
23 other agencies.
24 "Sir Thomas is aware that you have ensured that he
25 saw all warrants of any major interest on his visits to

18

1 you, but so that he might record his findings in a
2 complete and categorical statement, I should be grateful
3 if you would advise me by return that GCHQ has
4 undertaken no such activity involving members of the
5 Royal Family."
6 Did you write back by return, as asked?
7 A. I cannot remember whether it was -- fairly much by
8 return, on 5th February.
9 Q. And that is a letter from you to Sir Thomas' secretary,
10 which again, we might have on the screen, please,
11 Mr Foley. [INQ0061065]
12 If you would be good enough to read the letter to
13 us, Sir John?
14 A. Yes. I say:
15 "Dear Clare, IOCA Commissioner's report 1992.
16 "Thank you for your letter of 2nd February. Please
17 tell the Commissioner that I am happy to repeat without
18 reservation the assurance given to the House of Commons
19 by ministers: GCHQ categorically denies any involvement
20 in intercepting, recording or disclosing of telephone
21 calls involving members of the Royal Family."
22 Q. Was it the practice and indeed statutory duty of the
23 Commissioner to produce a report annually --
24 A. It was.
25 Q. -- dealing with these matters. And do we find at

19

1 exhibit 8 a copy of the report of the Commissioner for
2 1992?
3 A. We do.
4 Q. Now, what I would like to do, Sir John, is pick up with
5 your help a number of the points that Sir Thomas Bingham
6 made in his report. And perhaps we can have bits and
7 pieces of it on screen as I do so.
8 Could we start, please, with the third page which is
9 the covering letter from Sir Thomas Bingham to the Prime
10 Minister? [INQ0060688]
11 We see this is written on 9th March 1993, so it
12 plainly follows his visits to you in January and
13 the correspondence that we have just looked at.
14 A. I am very sorry, obviously, I did not turn off my mobile
15 phone, which may be relevant to these proceedings.
16 Q. I am very glad it was you, Sir John and not me.
17 All right, 9th March, so it follows the events that
18 we have just been discussing and we see that it was
19 Sir Thomas's first annual report. He had in fact taken
20 over from whom?
21 A. I ought to remember that. I think it was Stuart-Smith.
22 Q. I think it was Lord Justice Lloyd --
23 A. Lord Justice Lloyd, indeed it was.
24 Q. I am sorry, it is not a memory test, Sir John.
25 Now, turning to the next page, please [INQ0060689], we can pick

20

1 it up if we may at paragraph 4, Sir Thomas is describing
2 the Act and procedures and safeguards and in
3 paragraph 4, he says this:
4 "Under the Act and the practice which has developed
5 under it, there are effectively four major safeguards
6 against abuse, using "abuse" to mean any official
7 interception carried out otherwise than in strict
8 accordance with the Act."
9 And he went on to say this at paragraph 5:
10 "The first major safeguard is one which is only
11 implicit in the Act itself but is in my view of supreme
12 importance. It is the professional vigilance,
13 competence and integrity of those who initiate and
14 prepare warrant applications for considerations by
15 Secretaries of State. In the first instance,
16 applications for warrants are initiated by police forces
17 in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, Her
18 Majesty's Customs & Excise and the intelligence
19 agencies."
20 And he then goes on to explain how they are
21 channelled through appropriately to ensure that
22 the warrants are obtained from the right person.
23 So professional vigilance, competence and integrity
24 is something that you would agree with as an important
25 safeguard?

21

1 A. Absolutely, sir. It is an extremely important safeguard
2 under the terms of this Act and indeed in relation to
3 any other of the activities of GCHQ.
4 Q. If one goes over the page, to paragraph 6, he records
5 this:
6 "The second major safeguard against abuse and that
7 on which the Act concentrates is the requirement that
8 a Secretary of State should personally sign or authorise
9 every warrant."
10 So that was the position under the 1985 Act.
11 A. It was.
12 Q. Paragraph 7, if you can look at that:
13 "The third major safeguard is provided by
14 the Commissioner himself."
15 And he then explains his role. And then, picking it
16 up at the bottom, seven lines from the end of that
17 paragraph:
18 "Although I have described a number of instances in
19 which mistakes were made or mishaps occurred, I have
20 seen no case in which the statutory restrictions were
21 deliberately evaded or corners knowingly cut.
22 A salutary practice has grown up by which the
23 Commissioner's attention is specifically drawn to any
24 case in which an error or contravention of the Act has
25 occurred: I accordingly believe that there has been no

22

1 such case during 1992 of which I am unaware."
2 And you would endorse that view?
3 A. I would.
4 Q. And then we see in paragraph 8:
5 "The fourth major safeguard is provided by
6 the tribunal ..."
7 Can I pause there? We have heard a little bit about
8 this from Sir Richard that there was a judicial tribunal
9 to which complaints could be made.
10 A. There was.
11 Q. And then he goes on:
12 " ... whose function is to investigate cases of
13 alleged contravention and (if any contravention is
14 found) report it to the Prime Minister and order
15 appropriate redress. During 1992 some 45 complaints
16 were made to the tribunal, which completed its
17 investigation of 53 (a figure which includes 13
18 complaints left over from 1991). At the end of 1992,
19 there were five complaints outstanding. In no case
20 which it investigated did the tribunal find that any
21 contravention had occurred."
22 And then he goes on:
23 "This conclusion perhaps deserves a little emphasis.
24 From time to time stories are published in newspapers
25 describing interception said to have been carried out by

23

1 GCHQ or by what are usually called MI5 and MI6. Such
2 stories are, in my experience without exception, false.
3 They give the public an entirely misleading impression
4 both of the extent of official interception and of
5 the targets against which interception is directed."
6 Now in his letter to you of 2nd February which
7 we looked at five minutes ago, Sir Thomas's secretary
8 indicated that he was minded to deal explicitly with
9 the Royal bugging allegation in his forthcoming report.
10 He did not in fact do so, did he?
11 A. He did not do so in specific terms in relation to Royal
12 bugging.
13 Q. But he did do so in the terms that I have just read,
14 namely that all allegations of this nature within his
15 experience were without exception false [INQ0060690]?
16 A. Indeed and my belief is that his statement there in
17 paragraph 8 is drawn, amongst other things, on
18 the assurances which he had been given and any
19 investigations which he may have thought proper to carry
20 out.
21 Q. Now, we have moved ahead in time a little to Sir
22 Thomas's report in March. But it is right, isn't it
23 that there was official consideration given to
24 the question of the alleged bugging of the Royal Family
25 that went on in January and February and March of that

24

1 year, 1993?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. And you produce as exhibits 9 and following documents
4 which touch on that. And, Sir John, these are documents
5 which were shown to the jury by Lord Fellowes I think
6 two or three weeks ago now and so it will not be
7 necessary to read them all through, but I would like, if
8 I may, to pick up with you their contents so that you
9 may explain your involvement and that of GCHQ.
10 Now, the first of them, which is JAA9, a document
11 that Lord Fellowes took us through, which is a note of
12 a meeting that occurred on Thursday 21st January 1993.
13 Do you have that in front of you, Sir John?
14 A. I do.
15 Q. And that is a meeting which we can see from those
16 attending at the top included you?
17 A. It did.
18 Q. And the others there were Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet
19 Secretary?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Sir Clive Whitmore who was Permanent Secretary at
22 the Home Office?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Sir Kenneth Scott who was Lord Fellowes' depute, as it
25 were, on that occasion?

25

1 A. Yes.
2 Q. Mrs Rimington, who was the head at the time of MI5,
3 the Security Service?
4 A. She was.
5 Q. And Mr Phillips, who was the Permanent Secretary at
6 the Department for National Heritage?
7 A. I believe he was.
8 Q. And there is a name blacked out which is the name of
9 a representative of SIS who was also there?
10 A. He was.
11 Q. Now we certainly have seen this, and this document
12 summarises the discussions that collectively were had
13 and, amongst other things, it considered the pros and
14 cons of initiating an investigation into who might have
15 been responsible for the two interceptions that were
16 the subject matter of concern.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. And is it right that one of the concerns recorded in
19 this document was that there may yet be further tapes
20 out there that might come into the public domain,
21 I think that we see from the sixth or seventh line of
22 paragraph 2? [INQ0060696]
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. And then there was a discussion about whether there
25 should be a police investigation or a Security Service

26

1 investigation and the pros and cons of those courses
2 were broadly discussed and noted?
3 A. They were.
4 Q. And it is also right, isn't it, that it was the view --
5 and one sees this from the third page of the document at
6 (vi), that this was a matter on which ministers would
7 need to be consulted and agree to any course proposed?
8 [INQ0060698]
9 A. It was.
10 Q. So, the summary which one sees in paragraph 4 is that
11 Sir Clive Whitmore was going to speak to the Home
12 Secretary and, if I can paraphrase, report back to
13 various people.
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Then there was a discussion about press allegations
16 which one sees at paragraph 5 in which disappointment
17 was expressed about the continuing allegations, despite
18 the categorical assurances given by ministers.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. That it was thought right that ministerial assurances
21 had been put on the record, and right that your
22 organisation should have issued its press release.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. As far as the future was concerned, the view, at
25 paragraph 7, was that the intelligence agencies, if

27

1 the matter continued, would refer back to and rest upon
2 the ministerial statements? [INQ0060699]
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. So that is how it was on 21st January. Then if one goes
5 to the next exhibit, again a document that the jury
6 looked at with Lord Fellowes. We --
7 A. I am sorry, momentarily I have lost my place.
8 Q. Exhibit 10, Sir John. It should be the next one in your
9 file.
10 A. Yes, thank you. [INQ0060700]
11 Q. This is a letter written on the next day by Sir Clive
12 Whitmore, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, to
13 Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet Secretary?
14 A. Correct.
15 Q. This letter follows a discussion that Sir Clive had had
16 with the Home Secretary?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Who was at the time?
19 A. Kenneth Clarke.
20 Q. It records the Home Secretary's view that he was not
21 persuaded that an investigation was necessary.
22 A. It does.
23 Q. If one looks at the second paragraph on the first page,
24 we will not read it all out but Sir Clive set out in
25 a distilled form the particular points and concerns of

28

1 the Home Secretary?
2 A. He did.
3 Q. And perhaps if I can pick it up at the very bottom
4 [INQ0060701]:
5 "He believes that the press would not accept
6 the line that the very fact that the inquiry was being
7 undertaken by the Security Service was a clear
8 indication that the Government was confident that
9 the security and intelligence agencies had not been
10 involved in some way in the interception of the
11 conversations."
12 And then Sir Clive went on:
13 "I think that the Home Secretary's clear view means
14 that we cannot pursue the idea of an inquiry any further
15 at the moment."
16 A. Correct.
17 Q. We see that letter was copied to you and to others who
18 had been present at the earlier meeting.
19 Given the Home Secretary's view, conveyed in that
20 letter, are we right to assume, therefore, that no
21 investigation was conducted by the police or by
22 the Security Service?
23 A. As far as I am aware, no investigation was conducted by
24 either of them into the matter of the alleged
25 interception of the telephone calls by members of the

29

1 Royal Family.
2 Q. But it is right, isn't it, that that letter was not
3 the end of the story as far as GCHQ were concerned?
4 A. Indeed.
5 Q. If we could go to JAA11, again a document that the jury
6 saw through Lord Fellowes a little while ago.
7 [INQ0060702] This is a letter from the Queen's Private
8 Secretary, Lord Fellowes, dated 26th January, which
9 we see from the bottom was again copied to you and
10 others who attended that meeting?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. And within this letter, Sir Robert as he then was
13 proposed some further action, is that right?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. I wonder if you could just read his letter into
16 the transcript, please?
17 A. The whole letter?
18 Q. Perhaps the third paragraph only would be sufficient.
19 A. Right. Robert Fellowes said:
20 "It seems to me that there is such a wide spread of
21 opinion about the technical ability of the professional
22 or amateur use of a 'scanner', in whatever form, to have
23 intercepted the relevant conversations that it would be
24 worth, for the purposes of clearing our minds, to ask
25 for an expert opinion on this technical aspect.

30

1 The press, naturally, like to play up the theory that
2 tapes of this quality could only be obtained by
3 'professionals'. Others have told me that any amateur
4 user of a 'scanner' could have obtained them, given
5 ordinary luck. Do you think you might ask an expert at
6 GCHQ his or her opinion? Apart from all else, we would
7 thereafter be much wiser as to the real risks of using
8 mobile phones and on whether it may or may not be
9 necessary to have all Royal residences comprehensively
10 swept for bugging devices."
11 Q. Did you reply to that letter following a conversation
12 that you had with Sir Robert Fellowes? I think we see
13 the letter at JAA12. [INQ0060703]
14 A. I did.
15 Q. Could you read that one on to the transcript, please?
16 A. "Dear Robert, We spoke this morning about the suggestion
17 in your letter of 26th January to Clive Whitmore that
18 GCHQ might provide an expert opinion on technical
19 aspects of the alleged interception of telephone
20 conversations. I shall of course be happy to arrange
21 this, in consultation with the Security Service.
22 "2. To enable us to give an informed opinion, it
23 would be most helpful to know the locations involved
24 (both ends of any relevant conversation), and what form
25 of telephone has been in use at either end (ie normal

31

1 instrument, cordless telephone or cellular telephone).
2 It is of particular significance whether one end of any
3 call was located in a rural area and, if it was, what
4 type of telephone was used."
5 Q. And then you copy the letter to the usual people.
6 Sir Robert replied to you just over a month later on
7 2nd March, is that right, and that is your next exhibit,
8 JAA13?
9 A. It is.
10 Q. And this is what you said [INQ0060704]:
11 "Thank you for your letter of 29th January. I am
12 sorry it has taken so long to come back to you. I now
13 have the information you require, even if it is not as
14 precise as might be desired.
15 "If one supposes that the tapes of which we are
16 talking are genuine, the information is as follows:
17 (a) In the conversation between
18 the Princess of Wales and James Gilbey, the former was
19 using a fixed line at Sandringham House and the latter
20 a portable car telephone in a rural area.
21 "(b) In the conversation between the Prince of Wales
22 and Mrs Parker Bowles, the former was on a Motorola
23 mobile telephone in a rural area of Cheshire and the
24 latter on a fixed line in a rural area of Wiltshire."
25 And he too copies the letters.

32

1 Did you also become aware of and have provided to
2 you a technical analysis or report that had been
3 prepared by Mr John Nelson, an independent consultant,
4 providing his views about the circumstances of
5 interception of the call of the Princess of Wales?
6 A. I did.
7 Q. And that you produce as exhibit JAA14. For our
8 purposes, can I invite you, Sir John, just to show us
9 the final conclusions of that report which are on its
10 last page?
11 A. I must apologise to the inquest for the poor state of
12 this particular copy, which is very difficult to read,
13 but perhaps one can find one's way through it.
14 Q. I think so.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I am sure it is not your fault.
16 We have to do the best we can with what we can get.
17 MR BURNETT: This is a report written by John Nelson, dated
18 22nd January 1993.
19 Now, first, this was not a report from anyone within
20 GCHQ; this was provided to you from outside.
21 Absolutely.
22 Q. And it is right, isn't it, that Mr Nelson's views had
23 informed some newspaper reporting and particularly in
24 The Sunday Times.?
25 A. Yes.

33

1 Q. Looking at the final conclusions, he said this:
2 "1. The tape-recording analysed by myself of
3 the conversation between the two parties alleged to be
4 the Princess of Wales and [Mr] Gilbey could not have
5 been recorded by means of Cyril Reenan's scanning
6 receiver or any other scanning receiver tuned to
7 the output frequency of a cellular base station. This
8 conclusion applies irrespective of whether the putative
9 call was recorded in real time or as the result of some
10 form of rebroadcast."
11 Now, in just a sentence, what is he actually saying
12 there?
13 A. Sir, if I may, I think I better not try to elaborate on
14 what Mr Nelson says. I am not, myself a technical
15 expert on these matters which are displayed in his
16 report. And there is some danger, if I try to analyse
17 what he is saying, that I will get it wrong.
18 Q. All right. I was really seeking your help, Sir John,
19 with what a scanning receiver might be.
20 A. A scanning receiver, as I understand Mr Nelson to be
21 talking here, would be the kind of receiver which you
22 can go and buy in any normal shop which provides
23 electronic radio equipment and which will scan through
24 frequencies which you set on to the device and listen
25 for any communications which are receivable on those

34

1 frequencies.
2 Q. Thank you. Then, if we can skip over 2 and go to 3:
3 "The combination of evidence from an analysis of
4 the radio frequency issues involved and that derived
5 from a comprehensive audio analysis leads inexorably to
6 the conclusion that the recording can only have been
7 made by means of a direct or possibly inductive-pickup
8 tapping of the telephone line somewhere between
9 the female party's telephone line itself and the local
10 exchange."
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Now again, I hope this does not take you beyond your
13 technical knowledge but it might assist the jury to
14 understand what a direct pickup is and what an
15 inductive-pickup is?
16 A. I think what it probably refers to in the first case is
17 that one might, in some way, put a physical tap on to
18 the line being used by means of a clip or some other
19 device which would take the conversation or whatever
20 it was and enable it to be recorded.
21 Or, by using an inductive-pickup, to listen to or
22 record the electromagnetic emanations from that line,
23 which are detectable some distance from the line itself.
24 Q. So, his conclusion here is pointing firmly to somebody
25 picking this call up from the landline somewhere between

35

1 Sandringham House and the local exchange in Norfolk?
2 A. Yes. I imagine he is.
3 Q. And then he goes on at number 4:
4 "An attempt has been made to disguise the fact that
5 the recording was made by a local tap by making it
6 appear that it was recorded over cellular radio."
7 And then he explains why he came to that conclusion.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Can you remember who provided that to you or how it came
10 to GCHQ?
11 A. I cannot remember precisely but I believe it came from
12 one of the telecommunications companies involved, who
13 had commissioned their own analysis. That is purely my
14 recollection and I have not checked that.
15 Q. Then Sir Robert also sent you a transcript of
16 a broadcast programme in Australia, which I think I need
17 not trouble you with. Is it right that on 23rd
18 March 1993, this is exhibit 16, Sir John, you wrote to
19 Sir Robert Fellowes with the results of the inquiries
20 that you had made at GCHQ? [INQ0060727] [INQ0060728]
21 A. I did.
22 Q. Could you read that to the jury?
23 A. "Dear Robert, thank you for your letter of 2nd March
24 with information about the alleged conversations.
25 "2. I have now consulted my technical experts who

36

1 have considered how conversations might have been
2 intercepted in the circumstances you describe. Their
3 advice is based on your information and their own
4 technical knowledge, not on any direct access to
5 recordings of the conversations (which are not available
6 to GCHQ). In the last few days, we have however seen
7 a copy of the report written by Mr John Nelson,
8 following his analysis of tapes alleged to be of
9 the first conversation you mention. This report was
10 referred to in a Sunday Times article of 24th January,
11 which I expect you have seen.
12 "3. My experts' advice is that people intent on
13 recording private telephone conversations between
14 members of the Royal Family and their friends would be
15 able to do so on a regular basis in a rural area by
16 equipping a vehicle with a scanning receiver and tape
17 recorder and by positioning themselves within
18 a few kilometres of the portable hand- or carphone in
19 use. Both of the alleged conversations would have been
20 vulnerable to such a technique.
21 "4. An alternative possibility would be illegal
22 interference with fixed telephone lines. Unprotected
23 premises in rural locations would be more accessible to
24 this form of tampering but both the alleged incidents
25 could have occurred in this way.

37

1 "5. I am sorry that it has not been possible to
2 reach an unequivocal conclusion but my experts assure me
3 that the circumstances of the conversations described in
4 your letter are consistent with either scenario. It is
5 at least clear that neither method of interception would
6 need inside knowledge or physical access to the inside
7 of buildings. This conclusion does not, of course, rule
8 out the possibility of a hostile person tampering with
9 the telephones within the building concerned.
10 "6. It would also be quite possible for someone to
11 disguise the form of the original interception by
12 'doctoring' the tapes. Mr Nelson's report of the first
13 alleged conversation mentioned in your letter concludes
14 that this was attempted in that case. My experts
15 (without direct access to the recordings) have no reason
16 to dissent from his conclusions.
17 "7. Please let me know if there is any further
18 advice required."
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: However it was done, it was
20 illegal?
21 A. Yes.
22 MR BURNETT: In the third paragraph of that letter,
23 Sir John, you referred to "my experts' advice". Now,
24 the Coroner has been provided with the whole file from
25 which this correspondence has been extracted. And there

38

1 is no written advice from your experts within that. Do
2 you know whether the advice was in writing or whether
3 it was given orally?
4 A. There is written advice in relation to
5 the correspondence which we are now dealing with, in
6 that I think I too have looked at the files. I think
7 there was a draft of this letter which has been given
8 to -- which I then sent to Sir Robert Fellowes at the
9 time, which may have had some comments on it or
10 whatever, and it is possible that I, in writing this
11 letter, changed some of the details before the thing was
12 sent.
13 Q. So, the draft of the letter comprises the advice and
14 that is it, as far as the written --
15 A. As far as I can recall. I do not of course have access
16 now to the papers.
17 Q. Now --
18 A. But just to make clear, in saying that, if I may, this
19 advice was relating to the question of what we were
20 saying to Sir Robert Fellowes in giving advice, not to
21 the earlier questions which were dealt with in your
22 earlier examination.
23 Q. Yes, so this was concerned with the specific request
24 that Sir Robert had articulated in the letter that
25 we looked at and that the way it was dealt with was for

39

1 those who are the experts to draft a letter for you
2 which you then no doubt put into your own words to some
3 extent, if you were not happy with the language used and
4 the structure and so forth.
5 A. Indeed.
6 Q. A pretty normal exercise. A pretty normal exercise.
7 The Queen's Private Secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes,
8 wrote back to you on 24th March, exhibit JAA17,
9 [INQ0060729] thanking you for your letter. He said
10 this, didn't he:
11 "I am most grateful to you and your team for
12 undertaking this inquiry. The result is, in its way,
13 reassuring, though I never believed there was any
14 possibility of a definitive answer emerging from it.
15 I have passed the information on to the Private
16 Secretaries of the Prince and Princess of Wales and
17 reminded them that the security services will undertake
18 'sweeping' of the telephone equipment speedily and
19 efficiently as they do in this office at regular
20 intervals."
21 There is one other document that I would like to
22 look at with you. This is a note of a meeting that took
23 place on 4th May 1993. This is the third of the
24 additional documents that were produced last week in
25 response to a request from the Coroner.

40

1 It is written up on 4th May, and it concerns
2 a meeting that took place on 28th April.
3 A. That is correct.
4 Q. You have that?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Could we have that on screen as well? [INQ0061066]
7 This is one the jury has not seen before so perhaps
8 we can go through it relatively slowly. We see in
9 the first paragraph those who attended the meeting, and
10 on this occasion it included Sir Robert rather than his
11 depute.
12 It refers back to the last meeting of the group on
13 21st January and records that it had been decided
14 following that meeting that no formal inquiry should be
15 undertaken into the alleged interception of the
16 communications of the Royal Family.
17 So that is a reference back, is it, to the Home
18 Secretary's view which was of course accepted by
19 the agencies?
20 A. It is.
21 Q. Then the note goes on to record Sir Robert's request to
22 GCHQ for an expert opinion and that is the opinion
23 contained in your letter of 23rd March which we have
24 just looked at.
25 A. It is.

41

1 Q. And then:
2 "The intention was that the group should then
3 consider what further could be done to advise members of
4 the Royal Family and other key public figures including
5 ministers on how to protect themselves from similar
6 intrusion. GCHQ had produced a preliminary report in
7 conjunction with the Security Service and the results
8 had been recorded in Sir John Adye's letter of 23rd
9 March to Sir Robert Fellowes."
10 So again, that is a reference back to the short
11 letter that we looked at?
12 A. It is indeed.
13 Q. And then perhaps you could read to us paragraph 2, which
14 records your views and echos those that come from
15 the letter that we looked at?
16 A. "Sir John Adye said that expert advice had indicated
17 that people intent on recording private telephone
18 conversations between members of the Royal Family and
19 their friends would be able to do so on a regular basis
20 in rural areas by equipping a vehicle with a scanning
21 receiver and tape recorder and by positioning themselves
22 within a few kilometres with a portable hand- or
23 carphone in use. An alternative possibility would be
24 illegal interference with a fixed telephone line;
25 unprotected premises in rural locations would be more

42

1 accessible to this form of tampering. Neither method of
2 interception would need inside knowledge or physical
3 access to the inside of buildings.
4 "The technical experts had not had direct access to
5 the recordings but a report done by Mr Nelson on the
6 first alleged conversation looked convincing to them.
7 Mr Nelson's report had indicated that an attempt had
8 been made to disguise the form of the original
9 interception by 'doctoring' the text. This might
10 account for discrepancies between the date of the
11 conversation and its subsequent interception, and for
12 other technical discrepancies."
13 Q. As I say, we find an echo there of the words used in
14 the letter from a little bit earlier.
15 A. Indeed.
16 Q. Then, at paragraph 3, there is further information, is
17 there not, provided by Sir Robert Fellowes? He said
18 this, that:
19 " ... there had been a further development since the
20 last meeting. Evidence had been found [at a named
21 location] that the fixed telephone lines there had been
22 tampered with. It was almost certain that the [named
23 location] was where the Prince of Wales had been staying
24 on the night of the alleged conversation between him and
25 Mrs Parker Bowles.

43

1 And then, Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet Secretary,
2 wondered whether other premises should be checked.
3 The balance of the discussion that we see in
4 paragraphs 3 and 4 -- perhaps we could have paragraph 4,
5 Mr Foley, as well, essentially touches on precautionary
6 measures that might be taken for the future to avoid
7 similar events happening again. [INQ0061067]
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Then, if one just goes to the end of the document, one
10 sees this, that Sir Clive Whitmore, the Home Office
11 Permanent Secretary said that he would:
12 " ... inform the Commissioner of the Metropolitan
13 Police about the Security Service's review of security
14 for the Royal Family once its emerging findings became
15 clearer."
16 That, Sir John, is a reference, is it not, to
17 a general review of security which was undertaken in
18 that year by the Security Service?
19 A. It was.
20 Q. And no doubt GCHQ contributed to that?
21 A. We did.
22 Q. And that the Coroner has in fact seen the fruits of that
23 review and determined that they are not relevant for
24 the purposes of the inquests.
25 Lastly, Sir John, just returning to the Interception

44

1 Commissioner, perhaps I could take you to paragraph 20
2 of your statement? Do you have that in front of you
3 now?
4 A. Do I.
5 Q. You say this:
6 "I think it is important to emphasise that in every
7 year during the operation of the Interception of
8 Communications Act, the Commissioner examined
9 interception warrants that were issued by the Secretary
10 of State."
11 Now, pausing there, the Secretary of State concerned
12 for GCHQ was, I think you told us, the Foreign
13 Secretary?
14 A. That is correct.
15 Q. And you go on:
16 "In examining the warrants,
17 the Commissioner determined whether the warrant had been
18 lawfully issued in terms of the statutory tests of
19 necessity and there being no other reasonable means of
20 obtaining the information sought."
21 Now, pausing there, those two tests are set out in
22 the legislation, are they not?
23 A. They are.
24 Q. And you go on:
25 "It is clear from the Commissioner's reports for

45

1 the relevant period that the Commissioner paid great
2 attention to the issuing of warrants."
3 You then draw our attention to something said by
4 Lord Lloyd as he had become in his final report as
5 Commissioner for 1991. Perhaps you would like to read
6 that to us and explain it.
7 A. "Lord Lloyd in his final report as Commissioner
8 concluded that, 'During my six years in office, I have
9 not come across a single warrant which could not be
10 justified on the grounds of national security or
11 safeguarding the economic well-being of the United
12 Kingdom'."
13 Q. Is it right that those again are the statutory tests?
14 A. It is right.
15 MR BURNETT: Thank you, Sir John, those are my questions.
16 Would this be a convenient moment for the break, sir?
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: We always have a break
18 mid-morning, apart from anything else to help
19 the shorthandwriters. We will break for quarter of an
20 hour till five past.
21 (10.53 am)
22 (A short break)
23 (11.09 am)
24 (Jury present)
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes, Mr Mansfield.

46

1 Questions from MR MANSFIELD
2 MR MANSFIELD: Good morning. My name is Michael Mansfield
3 and I represent Mohamed Al Fayed and I have a number of
4 questions. As I have said to other witnesses in your
5 position, if there is any question -- because of the
6 lapse of time -- that you have difficulty with and you
7 want to refer to a document, please say so. And
8 secondly, there is no intention on my part to elicit any
9 material that you might regard as being sensitive or
10 putting other people at risk. Do you follow?
11 I have been very careful to phrase questions.
12 I will do the same for you.
13 Now, I want to, if I may, stand back for a moment
14 and consider what you may regard as rather simple
15 questions but there is a serious import.
16 Now, the first thing is, looking back on this period
17 which we are dealing with which is effectively
18 the summer of 1992 through to the spring and early
19 summer of 1993, that is the period we have been looking
20 at, all right? Now, in relation to those events, it was
21 perfectly clear that -- and I am going underestimate
22 it -- there was a very strong possibility that in
23 relation to the conversations termed at various times
24 either "Camillagate" or "Dianagate", in relation to
25 those, a strong possibility that crime had been

47

1 committed. Do you agree?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Second point: in that period of time between the late
4 summer of 1992 and the spring of 1993, who had
5 responsibility for investigating crime?
6 A. The police.
7 Q. Right. Now we know that the person who was primarily in
8 charge in this period, particularly in 1993, from
9 February onwards, was the person who is now Lord Condon.
10 Do you remember that?
11 A. I believe that was the case.
12 Q. He was designate in October of 1992 and he became
13 Commissioner in February of 1993.
14 I do not know whether you remember those dates but
15 those are the dates we have heard.
16 A. I do not remember the dates.
17 Q. I understand that, it is difficult obviously, over
18 the passage of time.
19 Those are the dates that he has given us. Now at
20 any stage in all the documentation we have so far had,
21 did anyone suggest that the normal course of events,
22 namely that the police investigate crime, that they
23 should do so?
24 A. In the documents which we have before us, I do not
25 recall that being said in such terms.

48

1 Q. No. None of the authorities represented, in particular
2 the security authorities by which I mean obviously GCHQ,
3 MI6 and MI5, if I may call them that for the moment,
4 none of the representatives -- and as far as one can see
5 one had the head of each present at these meetings --
6 ever suggested that actually this is sufficiently
7 serious, because I suggest to you it was sufficiently
8 serious, that actually the Commissioner of
9 the Metropolitan Police should in fact not have to be
10 asked, he should in fact already be investigating this
11 matter.
12 Do you agree, that was never put forward by any of
13 the heads of security agencies?
14 A. I think, sir, that at the meeting of 21st January 1993,
15 as I recall, there was discussion of whether the police
16 should conduct an investigation, or whether the Security
17 Service should conduct an investigation. And that was
18 read into the evidence during my examination-in-chief.
19 Q. Yes, you see the problem there -- let's just take that
20 one, you can look at the document you wish, that
21 document is 9 in your folders -- it started with Sir
22 Kenneth Scott on behalf of the Prince of Wales, although
23 nobody appears to be representing the position of
24 the Princess of Wales herself, but he is saying on
25 Prince Charles's behalf that they would prefer

49

1 the security services to interview them rather than
2 the police.
3 Do you follow? That is on the first page of
4 "possible investigation", do you see that?
5 A. I do.
6 Q. And it develops from there. Because the next page is,
7 there was a strong possibility that a crime had been
8 committed. And of course, as you are aware, the normal
9 course of events is that [INQ0060696], if a serious
10 crime has been committed, the police have a public
11 obligation to investigate it, don't they?
12 A. That may well be the case.
13 Q. Well, it is not "may well be"; it is the case, isn't it?
14 A. If you say so.
15 Q. Well, that is our understanding in this democracy.
16 The police are not as it were governed by political or
17 personal considerations if a serious crime has been
18 committed. Are they? Or are they?
19 A. I expect not but I am happy for you to make any
20 statements you wish but I do not think it is really what
21 I am here to inform the inquests about.
22 Q. Well --
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Unfortunately for Mr Mansfield's
24 point of view, he is not allowed to make statements, he
25 can only ask questions.

50

1 MR MANSFIELD: Is there something more you want to say?
2 A. No, no. It is all right.
3 Q. May I make it clear why I am asking you the question.
4 When Lord Condon was here, I did ask him the question,
5 and he left the witness box assuring us that we might
6 get an answer by now. The first question was: was there
7 an investigation and he did not know the answer to that;
8 and we have not had an answer, and the second question
9 was: if there was not, why wasn't there. And we have
10 not had an answer to that either.
11 Do I understand that you cannot help about this, or
12 can you?
13 A. I can only help in relation to the discussion which took
14 place at the meeting of 21st February -- I am sorry,
15 January 1993, and follow-on correspondence and so on
16 relating to it.
17 Q. I do apologise to have to ask it through you, although
18 I have asked the question again in public today, that
19 we might get answers to this. But there is a reason for
20 asking you more specifically, if you wouldn't mind
21 turning to a document which you were referred to moments
22 ago. It does not have a number, I do not think, but
23 it is the one which relates to the meeting on 28th
24 April. Do you have that separately?
25 A. I do. And I think that it is number 20.

51

1 Q. It is number 20. Thank you, I am much obliged.
2 I am sorry to give a preface, because you may wonder
3 why you are being asked the questions: this document was
4 not disclosed to us until very recently; disclosed to
5 us, that is me and others who instruct me, so that I can
6 ask questions. Otherwise, had it been disclosed before
7 Lord Fellowes gave evidence, I would have asked him.
8 Would you look at paragraph 3, please? [INQ61067]
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. I am going to go slowly in relation to this and in
11 a sense I am starting at the end rather than
12 the beginning.
13 May I make clear why I am asking the questions?
14 I want to suggest to you that there was a strong
15 possibility that there was a landline phone tap in
16 relation to Princess Diana. We will come to that in
17 a moment. But in this paragraph for the first time, it
18 has been revealed and you will see what it says, you
19 have been taken through some of it:
20 "Sir Robert Fellowes said that there had been
21 a further development since the last meeting."
22 You have already referred to that.
23 "Evidence has been found [redacted] that the fixed
24 telephone lines there had been tampered with."
25 And then it indicates that it is almost certain that

52

1 that is where the Prince of Wales had been staying on
2 the night of the alleged conversation.
3 I want your help about this. I do not want to know
4 the named location but I want to know a great deal more,
5 if you can help, about first of all who found that
6 evidence?
7 A. I can provide no help.
8 Q. Did you not ask at this meeting, since this must have
9 come as a bit of a shock, or if not a shock,
10 a revelation of significance; it is a revelation of
11 significance, isn't it?
12 A. Yes, it was clearly significant. Sir Robert Fellowes
13 thought that it was significant in that he referred to
14 it at the meeting.
15 Q. I appreciate, your answers are very carefully worded.
16 You are a very careful person, aren't you? Considered
17 and careful.
18 A. Most of the time.
19 Q. Well, kindly let me know when you are not being, because
20 I do not know you, sir, so it is impossible to tell when
21 you are not. But let's assume you are. That is why you
22 have this particular job, obviously.
23 You would be concerned to ask questions, wouldn't
24 you?
25 A. In this case, I would be concerned to ask questions in

53

1 relation to the advice which we were giving to the Royal
2 Household about the protection of their communications.
3 Q. Yes.
4 A. Which was a very important matter with which, from --
5 starting in January, we had been particularly concerned
6 and at the time of this second meeting, on 28th April,
7 we were involved in the Security Service investigation
8 and examination of the Royal security and it is
9 certainly true that in this case, because
10 the Prince of Wales, I think, had been staying at
11 the location where it was subsequently found
12 the lines had been tampered with, it would be a matter
13 of security concern and we would need to take account of
14 that in the advice given to the Royal Household on
15 protection of their communications in future.
16 I am not implying by that that the location
17 concerned was connected with the Royal Household.
18 Q. No, no, but Sandringham is.
19 A. Indeed.
20 Q. I am coming to Sandringham. So, no implications as far
21 as the redacted location is concerned but, as I put to
22 Lord Fellowes, you cannot stop what is happening in
23 the future, if you don't know what has happened in
24 the past. Is that a reasonable proposition?
25 A. Well, that is doubtless why Lord Fellowes brought it to

54

1 the attention of the meeting at the time.
2 Q. Yes. Quite. What I want to know is who actually, as
3 a result of him bringing it to the meeting, bothered to
4 ask -- and I make it clear, unless something is being
5 hidden or there is a difficulty about it -- why
6 doesn't -- and it does not appear here, somebody say:
7 wait a minute, who found that? Was it the police? Was
8 it somebody else?
9 Secondly, I run through the questions which
10 I suggest are incredibly obvious to anybody on the
11 outside: who found it, when did they find it, where was
12 it, most particularly, what was it, in case it resembled
13 anything used by security services?
14 Now do you see the relevance of the questions? Do
15 you see the relevance?
16 A. I do see the relevance of the questions.
17 Q. Who asked any of those questions at this meeting?
18 A. I am not aware that anybody asked those questions at
19 that meeting. But I think it highly probable that other
20 people did ask those questions for the very reason which
21 counsel has mentioned.
22 Q. Right. Who did? Who asked the questions that I have
23 just posed, if you did not?
24 A. I do not know.
25 Q. Why do you say it is "highly probable"?

55

1 A. For the very reason which counsel has just suggested.
2 It could be relevant to the future protection of
3 the communications of the Royal Family to know that.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Well, Mr Mansfield, it may be
5 that, since the information came, according to this note
6 from Sir Robert Fellowes, that that is the source that
7 we ought to be going to to find out if there is any
8 further information on the lines that you are asking
9 about.
10 MR MANSFIELD: Certainly. I would be most obliged.
11 I do not want, because of pressure of time, to have
12 people brought back unnecessarily but I would be obliged
13 if he could provide that information. I would be
14 obliged if Lord Condon or somebody on behalf of the
15 police could now let us know whether there was or was
16 not an investigation generally and, if not, why not.
17 And if I may pursue a little further with you, I am
18 sorry I am doing it through you, but you were at
19 the meeting and it does appear no questions were asked:
20 why didn't you ask any questions at the meeting?
21 A. I imagine, although you will understand, sir, that this
22 is a very long time ago, we are talking about 1993 --
23 I imagine I did not ask questions about this at
24 the meeting because it was not the area of discussion
25 which was my department's particular concern. There

56

1 were other departments present who would be more
2 directly involved with this particular reported event.
3 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Mansfield, the obvious
4 implication from what we have on the screen in the note
5 is that whoever was interfering with Prince Charles's
6 telephone call had been trying to achieve something the
7 night before.
8 MR MANSFIELD: Possibly, yes.
9 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: This may really be a hare that
10 leads nowhere in due course. We have chased a lot of
11 hares in this inquest and I dare say one more won't make
12 any difference.
13 MR MANSFIELD: Sir, I think that is a little unfair. The
14 hares that I have been chasing are ones that are
15 relevant to what the jury have to consider.
16 Right at the heart of this one, if I may just say,
17 is the fact that it all comes back, of course, to
18 Princess Diana and her fears and whether they were
19 justified, about what she said she thought was happening
20 and that has been highly contested --
21 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I know how you put it and I am
22 not ruling you out.
23 MR MANSFIELD: This is not just another hare. Had this been
24 available earlier, I would obviously have asked
25 Lord Fellowes. If I may say so, it is a matter of

57

1 public and national concern that this material has never
2 been put in the public domain, as far as I am aware,
3 that a line had been tampered with in relation to this.
4 This has never been said publicly and it appears at
5 the moment that it has never been investigated. That is
6 what I am really leading to. The question is: why was
7 it not investigated? It is not a hare that is running
8 into a cul-de-sac, particularly in the light of the next
9 sentence arbitration and I will come to that in one
10 second.
11 If somebody on your behalf or somebody else, you
12 said "probably did", but you don't know who it was, were
13 the people providing advice in this field, people within
14 your department -- did they discover what had happened
15 in relation to Prince Charles?
16 A. No, they did not but that is because it would not have
17 been the responsibility of or appropriate for my
18 department, GCHQ, to have followed up this particular
19 incident.
20 Q. No but did they request that it be followed up so that
21 they could give proper advice? You see, we have not
22 seen the preliminary report that was prepared in
23 relation to all of this. We have seen letters in which
24 reference is made. Is there a report by GCHQ on all of
25 this, the question of interception of Royal phone calls?

58

1 Is there one?
2 A. There are various reports in the files concerned which,
3 as I understand, have been shown to the Coroner, who has
4 considered whether they are relevant to these
5 proceedings, and has, as I understand it, ruled that
6 they are not.
7 Q. Well, I am not in a position to know what has been shown
8 at various stages, only I would ask, once again it is
9 a further request, that we be shown any security report
10 which has any material relevant to the intercept in
11 relation to Prince Charles as well as the intercept in
12 relation to the Princess of Wales.
13 Now may I just pass on to the next sentence or
14 the next passage:
15 "Sir Robin Butler wondered whether if, in the light
16 of this information, other premises used by the Royal
17 Family should be checked, eg Sandringham."
18 I am not implying that the first premises were
19 anything other than premises used, but I want to come to
20 Sandringham.
21 It goes on in the next sentence:
22 "It was agreed that this would be worth doing and
23 Mrs Rimington [MI5] agreed to discuss the possibility of
24 a general security review with Sir Robert Fellowes."
25 Now, I appreciate -- and I have to do it through you

59

1 because there is not somebody else from MI5 I can do it
2 with -- it is a simple question: was there a check at
3 Sandringham in relation to a similar situation of
4 tampering with the Sandringham landline?
5 A. I do not know. But I think it likely that there was.
6 Q. Right. Now, who would have done it?
7 A. Either the Security Service or the police. Or possibly
8 both. It would not have been GCHQ.
9 Q. I understand that. Now I am sorry to press you about
10 it, is this what you imagine would have happened or is
11 it something you know did happen?
12 A. It is something I imagine would have happened; as I said
13 at the beginning, I do not know.
14 Q. All right. Because the obvious thing I want to put to
15 you is that, once the allegation had surfaced, which it
16 had by this point, that there was the possibility,
17 a strong possibility in Diana's case, of a landline
18 intercept, the most obvious and straightforward thing to
19 do is to check Sandringham straightaway, isn't it?
20 A. Maybe.
21 Q. Well I want to suggest to you that it is not really
22 a "maybe"; it is the most obvious thing to do, to go
23 straight to Sandringham, you would have every
24 justification for doing so and check it out, even though
25 at that stage it is many years since the original

60

1 interception took place which was in 1989, in December.
2 That really is an obvious precaution to take,
3 straightaway because if you discover something is there,
4 then you know how to, as it were, avoid that happening
5 again.
6 Now, all of that makes complete common sense,
7 doesn't it?
8 A. That may be so, sir, but this was not an aspect of the
9 case for which I was responsible at the time. I was
10 giving advice to the Royal Household about the security
11 of their communications but it did not relate to
12 the physical security of Sandringham and that would have
13 been the responsibility of the police or conceivably of
14 the Security Service, and it is not something on which
15 I took any action at all.
16 Q. Do the other security services -- and I go slowly, in
17 case there is objection to the question, and the reason
18 for the question is: who is capable, beside other people
19 obviously outside Government agencies; which Government
20 agencies are capable of doing at that time landline
21 intercepts?
22 Now, plainly GCHQ under warrant was able to do so.
23 That stands to reason, doesn't it?
24 A. It may stand to reason, but I am not intending in these
25 proceedings to say anything at all about the capability

61

1 of my former department to perform any of its functions.
2 Q. It may mean that a number of questions I have are going
3 to be very difficult to reach a conclusion, if you won't
4 even go that far because the other questions are these;
5 presumably you can't or are not in a position to answer
6 them: did the other two agencies -- that is MI5 and
7 MI6 -- have an independent capability in the mid-1990s
8 and in particular 1989, a capability separate from GCHQ
9 to intercept communications such as telephones?
10 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You did not ask Sir Richard
11 Dearlove this last week, did you?
12 MR MANSFIELD: I have asked this question before. I cannot
13 remember whether it was Dearlove. I have asked
14 the question before and on that occasion there was an
15 unpreparedness to say.
16 I have asked the question before. I cannot
17 specifically remember whether I put it to Sir Richard
18 Dearlove but it is a question which --
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I do not think it is really
20 appropriate to ask the former head of one agency about
21 the capabilities of other agencies. It may be another
22 matter about his own.
23 MR MANSFIELD: Yes.
24 Just dealing with yours for the moment, and
25 the reason that yours has come up is because of evidence

62

1 from somebody else in this case, a police officer.
2 I can ask but you cannot answer whether you had
3 the capability to intercept on that occasion and
4 the reason for this question is of course you had
5 information that clearly indicated -- and I just want to
6 take you through the clear indications that you had at
7 that time -- before I do, it is a matter I have been
8 asking, could we have -- in fact, it is mentioned in
9 this, before I leave this document, on the previous
10 page -- I have referred to it, there is reference to
11 a "preliminary report". That is what I was mentioning.
12 I wonder if we might have sight of that, suitably
13 redacted, since it is a GCHQ report and it may be that
14 it has material in it.
15 GCHQ had now produced a preliminary report so this
16 must have happened before 28th April. Is that right?
17 A. I think sir, that is correct. If you look at the end of
18 the first paragraph of this document, you will see that
19 it says:
20 "GCHQ had now produced a preliminary report in
21 conjunction with the Security Service, and the results
22 had been recorded in Sir John's Adye's letter of 23rd
23 March to Sir Robert Fellowes."
24 [INQ00061066]
25 So we have in fact already been through all of that

63

1 and the conclusions have been clearly set out in
2 the letter which I wrote to Sir Robert Fellowes.
3 Q. Well, I am certainly not running a separate or
4 pernickety hare on this. Your letter of 23rd March is
5 not a preliminary report; it is merely telling Sir
6 Robert at that stage -- you have it as 16, I think --
7 it is merely indicating what the results are and I want
8 to suggest to you that the results indicate that whoever
9 you were getting advice from had not properly addressed
10 the problem.
11 So what we want to see is what is the underlying
12 written preliminary report that gave rise to this advice
13 that is being given on the 23rd. There was a written
14 report that led to this letter, is that right?
15 A. As I said before, sir, in response to some earlier
16 question from counsel, there were other papers relating
17 to this question which were on -- which are on the files
18 concerned with it. And they underlay or led up to
19 the letter of 23rd March which I wrote to Sir Robert
20 Fellowes. Those -- I believe there is nothing, from my
21 own looking at these files, anywhere else than on the
22 file concerned, which the Coroner, as I am told, has
23 seen and has apparently ruled that it is not relevant to
24 these proceedings.
25 Q. May I indicate through you why I suggest it may be of

64

1 some relevance to see that preliminary report in
2 the light of your March 23rd letter?
3 By the time you are getting advice, you have seen
4 the Nelson report, if I may put it that way. May I now
5 ask you about that?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. The Nelson report you have there, if you could just turn
8 it up please. This was a report that was originally
9 commissioned and dated in January of 1993?
10 A. Correct.
11 Q. And I am going to ask you to see where it was originally
12 made public through The Sunday Times, again in
13 January 1993.
14 Do you remember that, The Sunday Times?
15 A. I do not actually remember The Sunday Times article but
16 I believe that was the case.
17 Q. If you just look at the final conclusions and if that
18 can be put on screen. I appreciate that you have put
19 a preface on this and a precaution, namely that you are
20 not a technical expert but you have proffered some
21 observations, shall I put them like that, in relation to
22 paragraph 3.
23 Let's go through the final conclusions as a whole so
24 that you will see what the context is. The first final
25 conclusion is:

65

1 "The tape-recording analysed by myself [that
2 is Mr Nelson] of the conversation between the two
3 parties ...", and we are here dealing with the Diana
4 tape. It is not Camilla, the Diana tape.
5 " ... between the two parties could not have been
6 recorded by means of Mr Reenan's scanning receiver or
7 any other scanning receiver tuned to the output
8 frequency of a cellular base station."
9 So that is the first important conclusion, that
10 whoever was doing this was not, as it were, retrieving
11 the phone call in the first place from a mobile phone;
12 that is what he is saying, isn't it?
13 A. I believe it is.
14 Q. So we have to turn our attention to Sandringham and that
15 is paragraph 3:
16 "The combination of evidence from an analysis of the
17 radio frequency issues involved [and he has spelled
18 those out in this report] and that derived from
19 a comprehensive audio analysis leads inexorably to
20 the conclusion that the recording can only have been
21 made by means of a direct or possibly inductive-pickup
22 tapping of the telephone line somewhere between
23 the female party's telephone line itself and the local
24 exchange."
25 What that is saying is that, do you agree this,

66

1 somebody has had physical access to either the telephone
2 that she was using or the telephone line?
3 A. It does not actually say necessarily physical access.
4 Q. No. Because --
5 A. Because it refers to the other possible means being
6 possibly an inductive-pickup.
7 Q. Do you know what an inductive-pickup is/was?
8 A. Is counsel asking me that question?
9 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
10 MR MANSFIELD: I am. I do not think there is anyone else.
11 If you cannot answer it, please say so, because
12 I want to put to you what it is. But I first want to
13 establish, do you know what an inductive-pickup device
14 is?
15 A. I think I do, even at this remote distance in time
16 from what we are talking about.
17 Q. What do you have to do to get a product from an
18 inductive-pickup?
19 A. You have to have some form of radio receiver.
20 Q. Yes, that is at one end. What is at the other end?
21 A. I am sorry, you will have to rephrase your question.
22 Q. It is important and I will come straight to it. What
23 you had to do in 1989, just on this aspect of it, would
24 be to attach to the telephone itself a device sometimes
25 described as a "sucker" in the telephone handset. Were

67

1 you aware of that?
2 A. I fear that you are taking me beyond my recollections of
3 such technical competence as I may once have had.
4 Q. I follow that. That is why we need the original
5 preliminary report to see whether or not in fact
6 the technical points being made here about the direct or
7 possibly inductive which both involve physical
8 interference with a telephone or possibly the line, that
9 is what Mr Nelson meant when he wrote that?
10 A. I cannot agree to accept counsel's explanation of this.
11 He may well be right, but I do not know.
12 Q. You see, Mr Nelson's report was regarded as
13 authoritative and convincing by GCHQ. Wasn't it?
14 A. Yes, on the basis of the fact that -- perhaps I could
15 remind the court at this point -- that GCHQ had no
16 access at all to the original conversations which had
17 been recorded.
18 Q. No, I understand that caveat but in fact obviously this
19 gentleman did have at least access to what purported to
20 be -- they certainly were recordings but of course
21 the other feature here, so that it is clear to the jury,
22 was that whoever had done it had disguised, not very
23 professionally, the recording or the intercepts to make
24 it sound as though, when it was rebroadcast, it was
25 a telephone call taking place contemporaneously with

68

1 the person who then went on to record it. Do you
2 follow?
3 A. I do follow.
4 Q. So that is what had also happened on this particular
5 instance; someone had badly disguised it, or had
6 disguised it?
7 A. That was the conclusion of Mr Nelson's report and, as
8 we have said elsewhere, GCHQ did consider that report to
9 be entirely reasonable in the circumstances of the time.
10 Q. Now, I just want you to have on screen -- we have it --
11 The Sunday Times of January 24th. It is the only
12 newspaper I want to refer to.
13 Now, this is not in the form in the sense that it is
14 straight out of the newspaper, it has come off --
15 clearly you can see a website in relation to the date:
16 "Phone company confirms Royal Palace was bugged."
17 And you can see that it begins with a reference to:
18 " ... the Princess of Wales was deliberately bugged
19 at or near Sandringham to record intimate
20 conversations ...
21 "Cellnet, jointly owned by Securicor and
22 British Telecom, says the tapes which it analysed last
23 year were definitely not recorded off-air at the time
24 the Diana/Gilbey call was made.
25 "'We are completely satisfied that we can dismiss

69

1 this as an example of our network being eavesdropped'."
2 So that confirms that it has not come from a mobile
3 pick-up as it were, a mobile eavesdrop. Then there is
4 an investigation:
5 "... details of which have been kept a close
6 secret".
7 And then:
8 "Cellnet's claims have been supported by a detailed
9 independent analysis of the recordings by John Nelson,
10 [the person we have just made reference to] a leading
11 communications consultant, and Martin Collums, one of
12 Britain's top audio analysts. Their study reveals
13 exactly how the recordings were made.
14 "The recordings could not have been made via any
15 scanning receiver tuned to the output frequency of a
16 cellular base station."
17 And then it gives the explanation on the rest of
18 that page as to why it was not from a mobile and then
19 the next page, sorry, it is very little more:
20 "The recording must have been made as a result of
21 a local tapping of the telephone line somewhere between
22 the female party's telephone itself and the local
23 exchange."
24 That again appears to have come straight from
25 the Nelson opinion and so on that we have just been

70

1 through, do you follow?
2 A. I do.
3 Q. So that is where it is put very clearly in the public
4 domain that it must be a landline intercept. Now, you
5 yourself were sent -- and although you have not been
6 referred to it, could we have a look please at another
7 document, number 15. You were sent this by Sir Robert
8 on 18th March and it is a transcript of a programme that
9 was broadcast -- I do not know whether eventually it was
10 broadcast in the United Kingdom but it appears to have
11 been broadcast in Australia.
12 Could we look, please, at the fourth page, where
13 once again reference is made to what has happened on
14 this occasion, this time with reference to Martin
15 Collins or Collums, the name I have just read out:
16 "Martin Collins is a world expert in sound. He
17 normally designs new hi-fi systems for companies like
18 Sony. Four Corners [the name of the programme] asked
19 him to analyse the Squidgytape provided to us by The Sun
20 newspaper. First he tested a real intercepted mobile
21 phone conversation. It's low frequency spectrum shows a
22 typical flatness and trailing off but the Squidgytape
23 makes a totally different picture. The sharp peaks
24 reveal the tape came from a tapped telephone line.
25 "These are lines related to mains power frequency.

71

1 These lines should not be present on a scanner
2 recording.
3 "There are other telltale signs on the Squidgytape
4 which show that it has been recorded and remixed to
5 disguise its real original.
6 "I think that this tape has been made by a direct
7 wiretap on to a telephone line.
8 "And doctored afterwards?
9 "And has been processed in some way afterwards so
10 that superficially, it sounded like a Cellnet
11 broadcast."
12 So, GCHQ had a reported opinion by this expert. You
13 had Mr Nelson saying the same thing in The Sunday Times
14 article and you had the report. Now, what I would like
15 to know, if you can help us, is whether, in relation to
16 that clear indication, I suggest, of a direct phone tap,
17 whether GCHQ actually addressed that in relation to
18 Sandringham?
19 A. I think the answer is, sir, that we did because we wrote
20 in the terms which we have already gone over several
21 times to Sir Robert Fellowes, talking about that
22 particular specific possibility. And we said that it
23 was indeed quite possible that that had happened.
24 Q. It is your letter of 23rd March. What I want to suggest
25 to you is that it does not appear that GCHQ actually

72

1 addressed the possibility of somebody either getting
2 into Sandringham -- Sandringham is not an unprotected
3 rural premises, is it?
4 A. I am sorry. I would like to come back to the start of
5 counsel's question now.
6 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
7 A. The point was, in that letter of 23rd of whenever --
8 MR MANSFIELD: March.
9 A. I must get back to it.
10 Q. It is number 16. [INQ0060727]
11 A. If I could refer you to paragraph 4.
12 Q. That is the one I am looking at.
13 A. "An alternative possibility would be illegal
14 interference with fixed telephone lines. Unprotected
15 premises in rural locations would be more accessible to
16 this form of tampering but both the alleged incidents
17 could have occurred in this way."
18 And then, if you go on to the next paragraph, you
19 will see I say:
20 "It is at least clear that neither method of
21 interception would need inside knowledge or physical
22 access to the inside of buildings. This conclusion does
23 not, of course, rule out the possibility of a hostile
24 person tampering with the telephones within the building
25 concerned."

73

1 Q. I appreciate how it is carefully worded but what it
2 means is that, if this is a direct intercept at a Royal
3 Palace, if I may call it that, then there is a strong
4 possibility on the basis of these opinions -- you call
5 them a "hostile" person -- that a hostile person has
6 managed to gain access in order to equip the premises
7 with the necessary materials to afford an intercept.
8 That is a strong possibility. Isn't it?
9 A. It is one of the possibilities which we were explaining
10 to Sir Robert Fellowes at the time. There were also
11 the other possibilities, which are mentioned in my
12 letter.
13 Q. Now, the question I was going to ask: were you aware at
14 the time -- I appreciate now you may not remember -- but
15 were you aware at the time that Sandringham in
16 particular was not, unlike other locations that might be
17 put forward, an unprotected rural premise, was it?
18 A. I probably did know that there was police protection at
19 Sandringham.
20 Q. And I suppose it is too long ago and it might be in
21 the preliminary report as to where the handset was,
22 where the nearest as it were box that might be
23 interfered with with the lines going through it to
24 the exchange -- was any of this investigated to rule out
25 the possibility that anybody had got into Sandringham?

74

1 A. I do not know.
2 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think you were more concerned
3 with the future rather than what had happened four years
4 before.
5 A. Sir, I was. That was -- if I might in response to your
6 point elaborate on that just a little, all of this was
7 being looked at by us in GCHQ with the purpose which
8 you, sir, have just indicated.
9 It was to ensure the proper future protection of
10 the communications and security of members of the Royal
11 Family, for which we did have at least a partial
12 responsibility, along with other intelligence and
13 security agents. And we were at this point exclusively
14 concerned with making sure that we gave the best
15 possible advice to the Royal Household and to the police
16 if they were concerned on how that protection should be
17 carried out in future.
18 We were not at this stage, although we might need to
19 have considered it, doing an investigation into
20 the precise circumstances of what was alleged to have
21 happened previously.
22 We were taking those into account but we were taking
23 all the circumstances into account in giving our advice
24 as to what should be done in future.
25 MR MANSFIELD: Well, I have been through the details, and so

75

1 far you are not really able to help. You are not in
2 a position to say whether there was any investigation by
3 anybody in relation to what had happened in relation to
4 Sandringham. If we look at it as a whole, the whole
5 thing is passed over in terms of the future. That
6 appears to be what has happened here, doesn't it? Is
7 that fair?
8 A. In relation to the work which GCHQ was doing at this
9 time, we were then concerned with the future protective
10 measures, as I have just explained.
11 Q. Well, now I want to examine when you were asked to, as
12 it were, in the first place, examine the past in 1993;
13 because you were at some stage asked, were you, just to
14 do a check in GCHQ to see, although it was four years
15 after the event -- you were asked, were you, to do
16 a check?
17 A. I was -- GCHQ was actually at that stage -- I am sorry,
18 may I ask counsel if his question relates to what
19 we have just been discussing, in terms of the reported
20 conversation between the Princess of Wales and Mr James
21 Gilbey and the reported conversation between
22 the Prince of Wales and Mrs Parker Bowles.
23 Q. That is right.
24 A. We were -- we looked at that, as I have said in my
25 evidence before.

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1 Q. I am sorry to interrupt, I do not want to interrupt.
2 You are very careful in the way you answer and take
3 a little time. The question was: were you asked by
4 anyone outside GCHQ to investigate the possibility that
5 those conversations, or one of them, had been
6 intercepted by any member of GCHQ, first of all with
7 a warrant, or secondly, without a warrant and
8 unofficially. Were you asked to do that?
9 A. I was asked, I think in general terms to do that, by Sir
10 Thomas Bingham who was the Interception Commissioner.
11 We have already heard in evidence and have been
12 through the letter which his assistant wrote to me in,
13 I think, February of 1993, asking for an assurance that
14 GCHQ and the other agencies involved had not intercepted
15 these conversations.
16 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think what Mr Mansfield is
17 probably getting at is this: rumours are circulating in
18 the media that GCHQ are responsible for the tapping.
19 The Prime Minister eventually answers a question in
20 the House of Commons, making it clear that GCHQ have
21 done nothing of the kind. I think Mr Mansfield is
22 directing his question to, presumably, you were asked to
23 make your own investigation so that the Prime Minister
24 could be put in a position of answering this question
25 with a confident answer.

77

1 A. Yes, sir. I was answering the question as it was put by
2 counsel.
3 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Maybe I have misrepresented it.
4 MR MANSFIELD: May I say, you have it precisely.
5 A. I have already said I was asked that, but only at the
6 time of Sir Thomas Bingham's assistant's letter to me.
7 I was not asked that at the earlier stage. I myself
8 decided that, in order to answer fully or to enable
9 ministers to answer fully and truthfully on this if, for
10 example, the Prime Minister was put a question on 14th
11 January, whether he could truthfully say that
12 the intelligence and security agencies had not
13 intercepted the communications of the Royal Family.
14 And it was necessary to prepare for that. And I, as
15 part of my preparation as I have said in the evidence in
16 my witness statement, caused inquiries to be made within
17 GCHQ so that I could be fully satisfied that GCHQ had
18 not intercepted the communications of the Royal Family.
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Well, without giving away any
20 secrets, which is obviously very important, how did you
21 satisfy yourself?
22 A. I satisfied myself by again, as I think I have said in
23 my evidence -- if I may go back to my evidence, sir, on<