-Caveat Lector- from:alt.conspiracy.princess-diana As, always, Caveat Lector Om K ----- Click Here: <A HREF="aol://5863:126/alt.conspiracy.princess-diana:32794">James Hewitt's "Love and War"</A> ----- Subject: James Hewitt's "Love and War" From: Steve Reed <A HREF="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">asreed@lasting s.softnet.co.uk</A> Date: Wed, 17 November 1999 10:36 AM EST Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Love and War" by Captain James Hewitt. Blake Publishing Co., 1999. This very readable account of Hewitt's years as Diana's lover, of his experiences, as a tank-squadron leader in the thick of the Gulf War, and of the remarkable events which followed his being "made redundant" from the army, leaves the reader at a loss to understand (until he reaches the later chapters) why Hewitt became the object of a campaign of vilification and persecution, by elements of the media and other agencies, which continues to this day. And even then, it is left up to the reader to consider the facts and draw his own conclusions. From the very beginning of his story, the author exhibits the restraint and decorum which one would expect from an, albeit young and amorous, officer of the Life Guards and the heir of an old, county family. He recalls, for example, that, five years before he met Diana, in August 1981, when he was in Cyprus with the Guards Division Parachute Display Team, and the Royal Yacht Brittannia, with honeymoon-couple Charles and Diana on board, was lying at anchor off the island, not far from the military-base, he sent a signal to the yacht, inviting their Royal Highnesses to dinner at the regimental mess. There had been no reply. Told of this later, Diana said that she "would have loved to come, but Charles never mentioned any invitation". Hewitt, very charitably, opines, "I doubted if he had ever seen it: probably the signals officer on Brittannia just binned it - also I was secretly relieved I didn't have to pay for the meal [...] it would have been embarrassing to have my credit card thrown back at me." Later, with understandably less charity but no less restraint, he describes how, after five years as Acting Major, and after having been told that he would not have to sit a formal examination for confirmation of this rank, he was asked, in the autumn of 1991, to sit the standard, three, written papers, each of which he "failed by 1%" - even the main paper, on battle-tactics, in which, tried and not found wanting, in Operation Desert Storm (Hewitt was "mentioned in dispatches" from the Gulf) he was an acknowledged expert. Hewitt says: "But I knew my card had been marked quite some time previously; I was not so naive as to think that the authorities didn't discuss my situation with regard to the heir to the throne." This is not to say that Hewitt's liaison with Diana had been frowned upon, per se, by "the authorities"; he writes: "I doubt if my friendship with Diana was just a happy accident - perhaps I was set up, and Mannakee was removed, because it was unacceptable for the Princess of Wales to be conducting an affair with a Sergeant of the Royal Protection Squad." Regarding the manner in which Barry Mannakee "was removed", Hewitt says, of his death, "It was as a passenger in a motorcycle accident - not an easy murder to stage, although not an impossible one." And he quotes Diana: "They killed him, I'm certain they killed him [...] MI5, people in the Palace, somebody who wanted him out of the way." Hewitt goes on: "So somebody had to be found, not to become her lover, but a male friend who would lift her spirits and help her confidence in the absence of a caring husband." We could wonder how, in this instance, the term "lover", should be defined. Surely Hewitt does not believe that "the authorities" chose him - a young buck, already well known for his sexual adventures - rather than a much older man, or a woman, to play the role of a "friend" who would not "become her lover"! I take this as another example of Hewitt's typically restrained treatment; but he seems rather more convinced, that his affair with Diana was planned by others, than is implied by "I doubt if my friendship with Diana was just a happy accident"; for he also says, "She [Diana] later told me that the drinks-party at Hazel West's house [where D+H met, socially, for the first time, in 1986] had been held with the express intent of enabling her to meet me." " - Buckingham Palace is a place of long corridors and quiet whispers [...] there was no straightforward chain of command [...]," but "Hazel West would not have played the role that she did without the tacit approval of those above her." "So the whole plan of providing a companion for the Princess nearly worked perfectly [...] only one thing went wrong - we fell in love." I was surprised to find no hint, in this book, of the allegation which Hewitt made, for ITV's remarkable "Secrets Behind The Crash", that he had been menaced, personally, "by someone close to the senior Royals", with "dire consequences", if he did not "break off his relationship with Diana". Indeed, there is even a disclaimer: "At any time, our relationship could have been terminated by the Palace, but no attempt was ever made to do this." At this point, it seems that decorous understatement has turned into bending-over-backwards. And still one wonders how it came about that several British newspapers filled - and still do fill - their front pages, on many occasions, with abuse directed at Hewitt. We may assume that what was intended to be a frivolous affair, between him and Diana, turned into something more serious, and that this caused alarm in certain quarters - even, or especially, after Diana's death. But what connection is there between these "certain quarters" and that strident element of the press, whose attitude to extra-marital affairs can hardly be one of sincere moral indignation? (continued) -- Steve Reed ===== ubject: Hewitt's "Love and War", continued 1 From: Steve Reed <A HREF="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">asreed@lasting s.softnet.co.uk</A> Date: Wed, 17 November 1999 12:44 PM EST Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> In promising this review, I said, unflatteringly, of "Love and War", that I was "wading through it". This was because the book is well-endowed with what my wife calls "juicy bits" (which she enjoys immensely) and which I call "personal minutiae", or details of the sort which do not, IMO, add significantly to the political implications of the story. More than anything, for me, the "War", in "Love and War", is not so much the tank-battles of Desert Storm as the war which was declared, by Press and Palace, on James Hewitt, firstly when it was realised that Diana regarded him as much more than a toy-boy, and secondly, when, after Diana's death, it was realised that he possessed a large collection of her letters. The title, a fragment from the saying, "all's fair in love and war", could be challenging or conciliatory, depending on whose "all" is being discussed, but since - apart from the "juicy bits" - the book is a catalogue of attacks on the author, which are recounted with puzzlement, rather than rancour, one must assume that "Love and War" is intended to be a call for a truce, rather than the opening salvo of a counter-attack. After a long, legal battle with the Palace, Hewitt succeeded in having Diana's letters - which had been stolen from his safe in an extraordinarily complex burglary (organised by the staff of the Daily Mirror) - returned to him. No-one was prosecuted for the crime - not the staff of the newspaper which hired an adventuress, Anna Ferretti, to penetrate Hewitt's household, nor the adventuress herself, who removed the letters from the safe and conveyed them to Mirror journalists waiting nearby, nor the Palace, which received the stolen property forthwith from the Daily Mirror. If one had any doubt that the Palace was actually behind the Mirror's illegal acts, and remains legally culpable - at least as an accessory after the fact - one has only to recall that it attempted to deprive Hewitt permanently of his property. If, having received the letters from the Mirror, the Palace had returned them at once to Hewitt, matters would have been different; but the letters were not returned, and the Palace did all it could, over many months, to avoid returning them. So much for equality before the law, and so much for any lingering doubt that the hounds of Fleet Street were, and are, acting on their own initiative in persecuting the author. The character-assassination of Hewitt began very quietly, early in 1991 - if that was the point at which it began - when Richard Kay, the Court Correspondent of the Daily Mail, visited Hewitt at his camp in Kuwait. If Hewitt had realised that Kay was a reporter of Palace- gossip, rather than a war-correspondent, he might have been more cautious, but he was a long way from home and preoccupied with preparations for combat. Thus, when Kay offered to lend him a "satellite-phone", Hewitt leapt at the chance to call Diana, little knowing that Kay had the means and the motive to find out whom he had called and, quite possibly, what he had said, as well. During that conversation, Hewitt reports, "she said she just wanted to be with me - I said [...] she would have to marry me and she said she would love to do that." "Kay seemed an amiable enough chap," Hewitt tells us, "he said his main job was writing for the Daily Mail, but, in the case of the Gulf, there was a pool arrangement whereby certain articles might appear in other papers." If this was the decisive leak, then it took the News of the World (NoW) a few weeks to locate an old flame of Hewitt's and persuade her to put her name to a preposterous story, headlined "I Lost My Lover To Di". "There were pages of the stuff," Hewitt says, "and Emma [the old flame] had been dressed up to look like Diana - same hair, same jewellery, same pose: I wondered what had possessed her to do this." I don't believe that Capt. Hewitt is quite as slow in the uptake as he appears. This is another of his restrained understatements. It is quite clear what "possessed" Emma - the question was, why was the News of the World doing this? Incidentally, Neville Thurlbeck of the NoW - he who surfaced the report that Richard Tomlinson had been booked on S-111 - comes into the story quite a lot, later on. (continued 2) -- Steve Reed ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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