Strolling out for a takeaway, reporter BBC claims is too ill to talk about tricking Diana into interview
... as graphic designer at centre of Martin Bashir’s deception breaks his 25-year silence on the scandal
BESIEGED journalist Martin Bashir arrives home after a visit to an Indian takeaway and a wine shop – despite the BBC insisting he is too ill to answer questions over the ‘web of deceit’ he allegedly spun to clinch his Panorama interview with Princess Diana.
Our exclusive photograph – taken on Friday evening outside his £2million North London home – comes as a graphic designer at the centre of Mr Bashir’s extraordinary deception today breaks his 25-year silence on the scandal.
Matt Wiessler was ordered by Mr Bashir to produce two counterfeit bank statements, which the reporter used to win over Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother, and help engineer a meeting with the Princess.
BBC documents last week revealed how Lord Hall of Birkenhead, its former director-general who led an inquiry into the affair as head of news, made Mr Wiessler a scapegoat and reassured BBC governors the designer ‘will not work for the BBC again’.
Now in an ITV documentary, Mr Wiessler, 58, gives the most detailed account of a scandal that has cast a shadow over Mr Bashir’s sensational 1995 interview with Diana – arguably the BBC’s biggest ever journalistic scoop.
In bombshell interviews for the two-part series – some of which will be broadcast tomorrow and Tuesday – Mr Wiessler accuses Lord Hall and other BBC bosses of making him the ‘fall guy’ for Mr Bashir’s deception and demands an apology from the Corporation. He also claims that Mr Bashir, now the
‘It’s about producers and presenters protecting themselves at all costs’
BBC’s Religion Editor, pleaded with him not to blow the whistle and describes being ‘freaked out’ when his flat was burgled and back-up disks containing copies of the forged documents were stolen.
Mr Wiessler, a father of three who worked for the BBC for a decade and won a Royal Television Society award for redesigning the Corporation’s election coverage in 1992, says he struggled to rebuild his life after Lord Hall’s decision to blacklist him.
‘In almost a naive way, I thought when you worked for the BBC, you were working for the greater good of everything,’ he says. ‘You were always doing the right thing – for the public as a public broadcaster.
‘Almost all of that fell away and I thought what it is really about is senior management and senior producers and presenters protecting themselves at all cost. I quite clearly felt that I was the one who was going to be the fall guy in this story.
‘All I want is for the BBC to come forward and honestly make an apology because it’s had a huge impact.’
His comments came as astonishing details emerged yesterday of 32 smears peddled by Mr Bashir to secure his interview with Diana, including lurid claims about senior Royals and courtiers.
Handwritten notes taken by Earl Spencer of his meeting with Mr Bashir and Diana in 1995 – revealed yesterday by the Daily Mail’s Richard Kay – detail how the BBC journalist falsely claimed that the Princess’s private correspondence was being opened, her car tracked and her phone tapped.
The records also state that he falsely claimed that the Queen was ‘a comfort eater’ with ‘heart problems’ and that Prince Edward was having treatment for Aids at the Royal Marsden Hospital.
Mr Wiessler told ITV that he has finally agreed to speak out ‘because I’m this guy that’s remembered for forging the document and I want to clear my name’.
In October 1995, he was asked by Mr Bashir to urgently mock up two bank statements for him. Reconstructing documents for Panorama was not unusual, but Bashir needed the work completed overnight and did not say what they were for.
‘I got a phone call from Martin Bashir and he wanted me to do a favour for him and it was really urgent and really important,’ says Mr Wiessler.
‘Martin said that they really, really, really had to be done by the morning as he needed them at [Heathrow] Terminal Two. He said: “I need to show them to someone.” It’s almost like he was inventing it as he was going along.’ The fake statements purported to show that Earl Spencer’s head of security Alan Waller was receiving money from a newspaper group and a mysterious offshore company.
That was false and it is now known that Mr Bashir showed Earl Spencer the fakes to help gain his trust.
At the time, Mr Wiessler was in the dark, but he soon started to become suspicious, not least because one of the names used on the documents had appeared in previous Panorama programmes.
His anxiety grew in December that year when his flat in North London was broken into and computer disks containing the forgeries were stolen.
‘I was absolutely freaked out... I searched through my computer files in the office and I couldn’t find any of the back-ups that I had made of the statements that I had created for Martin,’ he says.
‘I became quite paranoid because I thought there must be more to this statement story than I can ever dream of. I’d never had a break-in before in my life. And I just thought someone was sending me a message or something.’
The theft prompted Mr Wiessler to raise his concerns with BBC chiefs but Lord Hall’s inquiry found that while Mr Bashir’s actions were ‘unwise’, he was ‘an honourable man’. By March 1996, Mr Wiessler was under intense pressure after details of his role had been leaked to the media.
In desperation, he confronted Mr Bashir during a meal at a restaurant in Clapham, South London, warning the journalist that he was considering going public.
Describing Mr Bashir’s reaction, he says: ‘All he could think of doing, was saying to me, “Whatever you do, don’t go to the media. Carry on talking to us. We didn’t do anything wrong.” I walked out of that restaurant, knowing that I had to go to the media. Because Martin was just simply... covering for himself.’
A lawyer advised Mr Wiessler to find a ‘good journalist’ and he turned to The Mail On Sunday’s Nick Fielding, who broke the story about how Mr Bashir had commissioned the fake bank statements.
Yet the graphic designer paid a heavy price. Work dried up and in 1999 he left the TV industry.
‘When I set up a production company together with an ex-colleague, I felt there was a cloud over that business because, constantly, I was being associated with these docu
ments that I had produced for the Diana film,’ he says.
‘The effect that this scandal has had on my life is that I lost faith a little bit, lost trust of people. I’ve become a bit more cynical. I’ve been hoping that something would come along to clear my name.’
Last night, the BBC repeated its pledge to hold a ‘robust investigation’ into Earl Spencer’s claims. It said that the probe would ‘have the appropriate independence people expect’. Despite Mr
Bashir’s visit to the Rajdoot Indian restaurant and a branch of the Nicolas wine chain on Friday night, the Corporation continued to insist it was unable to speak to the journalist.
‘Unfortunately, we are hampered at the moment by the simple fact that we are unable to discuss any of this with Martin Bashir, as he remains seriously unwell,’ said a spokesman.
The Diana Interview: Revenge Of A Princess, is on ITV at
9pm tomorrow and Tuesday.