Earl Spencer Speaks About Martin Bashir Interview: ‘Diana Didn’t Know Who To Trust’

Princess Diana’s brother spoke about how he draws a line between his sister’s death and meeting the journalist who, in 1995, lied to get an interview with her, in which she disclosed intimate details of her failed marriage.

An inquiry into how the BBC got the sensational interview found on Thursday (May 20) that the journalist involved had acted deceitfully and the broadcaster had covered it up.

The BBC set up the investigation, headed by former senior Court judge John Dyson, in November following allegations from Diana’s brother Charles Spencer that he had been tricked into introducing her to journalist Martin Bashir.

In a BBC “Panorama” interview conducted six weeks prior to the results of the investigation, Spencer said he sees a connection between his first meeting with Bashir and the death of his sister.

“Well, the irony is that I met Martin Bashir on the 31st of August 1995 because exactly two years later she died and I do draw a line between the two events,” he said.

He explained how Diana had a very difficult time in the public eye and did not know who to trust.

“It’s quite clear from the introduction that I sat in on on the 19th September 1995, everyone was going to be made untrustworthy. And I think that Diana did lose trust in really key people,” he said.

“In the end, when she died two years later, she was without any form of real protection.”

During the 1995 interview, watched by more than 20 million viewers in Britain, Diana shocked the nation by admitting to an affair and sharing details of her marriage to the heir to the throne, Prince Charles.

It was the first time Diana, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997, had made public comments about her doomed marriage.

Her remark that “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded” — a reference to Charles rekindling his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, now his second wife — was particularly damaging to the Windsors.

“Mr. Bashir deceived and induced him to arrange a meeting with Princess Diana,” Dyson’s report said. “Mr. Bashir acted inappropriately and in serious breach of the 1993 edition of the Producers’ Guidelines on straight dealing.”

Dyson’s report found that Bashir, then a little=known reporter, had shown Spencer fake bank statements to persuade him to set up a meeting with Diana.

Spencer says Bashir had told him Diana was being bugged by the security services and two senior aides were being paid to provide information about her.