Hasnat Khan, with whom Lady Di had love affairs, revealed how British journalist Martin Bashir took advantage of the princess and managed to get the controversial interview for the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ program.
In November 1995, Diana of Wales gave an interview in which she stated that In her marriage there were three of us, it was a bit crowded, taking into account Camilla Parker Bowles, the future Duchess of Cornwall. 25 years after the show came out, a scandal broke out about how journalist Martin Bashir managed to get it done.
Diana and Hasnat Khan, the cardiac surgeon of Pakistani origin, met in August 1995 when the princess visited one of her patients. Romance soon began, just a few weeks before the ‘Panorama’ interview, and lasted until the summer of 1997, ending shortly before the fatal car accident in August.
About three weeks after that first meeting with Hasnat, Diana was introduced to Bashir by her brother, Charles Spencer.
Almost immediately Khan noticed a change in the princess. Diana initially referred to Bashir as Dr. Jarman, a secret name she gave to her so-called “mole” due of fear that her phone line would be tapped. A fear Bashir fostered, according to Khan.
“She told me how he said there was a secret listening station in Kent where they eavesdropped on prominent people and how certain words triggered recording equipment,” the surgeon explained in his interview with Daily Mail.
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Bashir had made her distrust the people around her “by talking about microphones and wiretapping,” he added.
According to him, Diana even ordered a search for listening devices in Kensington Palace.
“One of her most attractive qualities was her vulnerability; it was what endeared her to the public. I later realised that Martin picked on those vulnerabilities and exploited them,” Khan said.
“She was not a paranoid person but all this talk of bugs and phone tapping was about getting her to a place where she distrusted things and people around her,” he added, stressing that “Bashir was a clever man.”
Khan is sure that Bashir manipulated the Princess of Wales.
“He was very persuasive with Diana. It was all about him being from the BBC, being respectable and very pious even. But he filled her head with rubbish, such as that stuff about the nanny Tiggy [Legge-Bourke] being pregnant with Charles’s child,” he said.
The fact that the princess had recorded a television interview was kept secret. Khan was one of the few people Diana trusted with the information, but after seeing it, he said it was “terrible” and a “big mistake”.
“I remember saying, ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right,’ he added, referring to the interview the Prince of Wales had given to Jonathan Dimbleby a year earlier.
Diana, however, assured him that she knew what she was doing and what the outcome would be: divorce.
According to Hasnat, Diana’s thinking was clear. “She said she would never ask for a divorce, but that it was what she wanted. She complained bitterly that Charles was able to get away with whatever he wanted, could see Camilla and there was hardly a raised eyebrow,” the surgeon recalled.
“if she was divorced she could date who she liked. This was not about me and our relationship at all. Rather she said it was about the boys, that it was important what William and Harry thought about her,” she added.
Diana introduced him to Bashir in a pub. The surgeon confessed that he was stunned and offended by the questions asked by the journalist.
“Almost from the word go, he started asking me the most direct personal questions about Diana and our relationship. Why didn’t we get married? When were we going to get married? That kind of thing,” he revealed in the interview.
Finally, the surgeon got angry and left the appointment. When Diana called him later that night, he told him that he found Bashir uncomfortable and dangerous. “I remember telling her that I didn’t like him, that I didn’t trust him and that I didn’t want to have anything else to do with him. I told him to be careful with him,” he explained.
The princess’s relationship with the journalist suddenly ended. One day Diana commented that she was no longer in contact with Bashir.
“I asked her why and she said because of William. If that’s the case, she could certainly believe it, because the boys were at the center of everything she did,” he mused.
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According to the surgeon, Prince William hated the ‘Panorama’ interview and told Diana that she had made a mistake which had upset him. He directly expressed his opinion about Bashir: “Mom, he’s not a good person.”
For the past 25 years, Hasnat Khan has avoided the limelight, ignored the grotesque speculations about Diana’s death, and most of all rejected the financial rewards he could so easily have obtained by writing about his love affair.
Journalist Martin Bashir, who is on sick leave now, is the subject of a judge-led investigation into how he got his sensational interview.