The Israeli embassy predictably reiterated what it said to all such allegations: “No American official or intelligence agency has complained to us about this. The story is nonsense. Israel does not spy on the United States.”
The Israel lobby excoriated Carl Cameron for his exposé. Representatives of JINSA, the ADL, and CAMERA argued that the Fox report “cited only unnamed sources and provided no direct evidence.” CAMERA’s associate director, Alex Safian, said “it was having ‘conversations’ with representatives of Fox News regarding Cameron’s piece.”
Safian also questioned Cameron’s “motives” in running the story. “I think Fox has always been fair to Israel in its reporting. I think it’s just Cameron who has something, personally, about Israel. He was brought up in the Middle East. Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe he’s very sympathetic to the Arab side. One could ask.” The implication was that Carl Cameron was a bigot; Safian would later make the same allegation about the entire editorial staff at
“I’m speechless,” said Cameron when he heard of Safian’s statement. “I spent several years in Iran growing up because my father was an archaeologist there. That makes me anti-Israel?” Cameron, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, had never before been attacked for “biased” coverage.
Michael Lind, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation—a think tank—and former executive editor of
While the attacks on Cameron and
No mainstream media outlet asked why the CIA, through its National Counterintelligence Executive, had been involved. Or why the FBI had established that the “students” had visited no fewer than thirty-six Defense Department facilities.
Finally, as the “students” were flying out on El Al back to Tel Aviv, all traces of Cameron’s reporting vanished from the Fox News Internet site. In its place ran a note. “This story no longer exists.” A CIA spokesman said: “We’ve closed the book on it.”
Shortly afterward, Halevy’s tenure at Mossad came to an end.
There was one other legacy Efraim Halevy would take into retirement: his decision to revisit the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed. After reading the Mossad file on the incident, he had asked Maurice, the agent who had been involved in trying to recruit Henri Paul—the driver of the car in which the young lovers had died—to prepare a new record of the couple’s last day together.
Had it been mere curiosity on Halevy’s part? There were rumors that he had met Diana during his time as Israel’s ambassador to the European Community. If so, he would not be the first diplomat to come under her spell. But more likely is that Halevy wanted to ensure that there was no new evidence to support the claims that Mossad had been indirectly involved in the deaths.
Maurice, now a desk man at headquarters, had prepared a detailed account of the last day in the life of Diana and Dodi.
Those who have read the account say it does flesh out the detail in the original Mossad report. Mohamed al-Fayed, the father of Dodi, is described as a man with a continuing obsession that Diana was pregnant and that she was the object of surveillance by the CIA, MI6, and French intelligence from the moment she and Dodi flew into Paris. There are transcripts of various phone calls, including one from Diana’s former Scotland Yard bodyguard, warning her to “be careful.” The evening of August 30, 1997, which the couple spent together in Paris, is carefully time-tabled. Next comes a similar recounting of how, in the first moments of Sunday, August 31, the couple rushed from the Ritz Hotel to try to reach Dodi’s apartment a short drive away. Then Maurice had focused on the white Uno. It had been parked close to the Ritz. Other photographers say it belonged to the paparazzo James Anderson. He had made taking photos of Diana his speciality. It had earned him a fortune. But it has been established Anderson was not present on the night in question.
Maurice described the white Uno in hot pursuit of the Mercedes, Henri Paul at the wheel, Diana and Dodi in the back, as the two cars raced neck and neck into the place de L’Alma underpass, where Diana and Dodi met their deaths.
