SPENCER’S ULTIMATUM TO BBC’S NEW BOSS

Dear Mr Davie, Please see below but one example of what I have in my Bashir/BBC file at Althorp. It directly disproves the points you make to me [regarding] the BBC’s actions of 25 years ago. Your piecemeal apology seems to be a way for you merely to say that you’ve apologised to me, rather than acceptance of the full gravity of this situation. You seem to be apologising for me having been shown false bank statements that were irrelevant to the securing of the interview – that is, those relating to my former employee, Alan Waller. However, it was Bashir’s showing me the false bank statements relating to very large payments to Messrs Jephson [Patrick, Diana’s former private secretary] and Aylard [Richard, Charles’s former private secretary] – payments alleged by Bashir to have come from the security services – that need to be brought into a much larger apology: one directed posthumously to Diana; to all who were so grossly lied to – including a global audience; and to me. For Bashir to claim that he showed me any false bank statements after I introduced him to Diana is a lie... I have never met him or spoken to him since the introduction of 19 September 1995. I knew, on 19 September, that he was lying. I had absolutely nothing to do with him after that date. I am now formally asking for the BBC to open an inquiry into this matter, and I hope that it will get to the bottom of key questions: why did Tony Hall’s inquiry not seek the truth from me? Why did it bend over backwards to whitewash Bashir? Who else knew the extent of his yellow journalism when securing what Hall calls “the interview of the decade... or of the generation”? I have to leave you in no doubt – because I want to be absolutely clear, not to threaten: this is all going to come out now. The sheer dishonesty of what I’ve seen in the BBC 25 years ago – both in Bashir and his colleagues’ actions in securing the interview and the whitewash under Tony Hall’s name – demands it. Yours sincerely, Charles Spencer