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BARBARA WALTERS He’s being called by some a traitor, a Judas. Prince William says his mother’s trust was betrayed by this man. Who is he? He is Patrick Jephson, formerly Princess Diana’s most trusted, highest-ranking adviser. In effect, her chief of staff. Now in an unprecedented break from royal custom, he has written a controversial book about Princess Diana. It is called “Shadows of a Princess: An Intimate Account.” The book won’t be in bookstores until Monday, but it has already caused an uproar in Britain. Patrick Jephson has given no other television interviews, not even in England. But recently, I talked with him in London about the princess he served and the job he began with such hope. What was your first impression of Princess Diana?
PATRICK JEPHSON The impression that I had, first of all, was colored by where and how we met. It was a wonderfully sunlit room. It was a happy occasion. And she fitted perfectly into that backdrop. She was vivacious and she had great presence. She was a star.
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) Patrick Jephson spent the next eight years trying to make that star shine more brightly. Princess Diana’s every public engagement was arranged by Jephson. A formal lieutenant commander in the Navy, he became Diana’s private secretary and the one constant during some of her most tumultuous times. He was so trusted that the princess made him executor of her will and the queen gave him a royal commendation.
PATRICK JEPHSON This is where we started and ended our working days.
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) When I spoke to him last month in front of Kensington Palace in London, his book was still a secret. Then news that he had written about his former boss broke. And the man behind the scenes began making headlines of his own. The princess once called him her rock. But now, he is being branded a rat and worse. (OC) You were so close to her and now you do a tell-all. How do you answer that? Why did you write this book?
PATRICK JEPHSON The impression that a lot of people have is that the Princess of Wales is a fairy tale figure, an icon. Other people have an impression of her as being in some way unbalanced. And as I saw the two false impressions being left in her memory, I thought it was imperative that a truthful impression should also be left.
BARBARA WALTERS Not treason to her?
PATRICK JEPHSON I don’t think the truth can ever be treason.
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) Jephson had signed a confidentiality agreement. But after Diana died, he no longer felt bound by it. (OC) Towards the end of your time with Princess Diana, you describe her as manipulative, devious, unstable? Do you ever worry that your frank account of Princess Diana may upset her sons?
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes. I thought very hard about that, and of course, I can’t speak for what they think or feel. But I do know that by reading this, they would at least have a truthful picture of—not a fairy story—but a real human being.
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) Patrick Jephson soon realized after he began work in the palace that the Prince and Princess of Wales were not living happily ever after. They slept in separate bedrooms and spent little of their private time together. The public image of Charles was that he was the bad guy and that Diana was the victim. True?
PATRICK JEPHSON Not true in my opinion. And my purpose in writing the book, one of the purposes is to give a more balanced account.
BARBARA WALTERS Give me the balanced account.
PATRICK JEPHSON They were both hard work for each other sometimes.
BARBARA WALTERS Why?
PATRICK JEPHSON She liked to feel that she was a priority.
BARBARA WALTERS And he?
PATRICK JEPHSON Also needed to feel a priority. So, those things aren’t always compatible, how to share the same spotlight.
BARBARA WALTERS Could anything have saved this marriage?
PATRICK JEPHSON It’s hard for me to speculate. But I think that the answer is no. I think they both tried their damnedest. So, if they couldn’t make it work, nobody could have done.
BARBARA WALTERS Was Camilla Parker Bowles the reason for the breakup of this marriage?
PATRICK JEPHSON No, I think it’s more accurate to say that perhaps she was the result of an unhappy marriage.
BARBARA WALTERS Not the cause of it?
PATRICK JEPHSON Not the cause.
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) By this time, the princess was having a romance of her own with her riding instructor, Captain James Hewitt. Part of Jephson’s job was to keep that affair a secret. Later, when Diana decided to drop Hewitt, she turned to Jephson to help her break it up. (OC) So your job was whatever ‘My lady wants, I will make happen’?
PATRICK JEPHSON Whatever my lady wants, I better have a good look at because this affects how my lady does her job.
BARBARA WALTERS In your book, you describe what you consider Princess Diana’s attitude toward men. You write that Diana avidly consumed what men offered and threw them away like an empty husk. Pretty strong stuff. What did you mean?
PATRICK JEPHSON She was a complex character under a lot of strain and that sometimes produced need for affection and reassurance and attention that was all-consuming. And that very few people were able to produce in the quantities required. I think the—the confidence is that she shared with me about her childhood were quite revealing. On one occasion, we visited her old school. And as we drove up to the front door she said, ‘I remember standing on those steps, as my father dropped me off at the start of a new term. I was terrible. I screamed at him, ‘If you leave me here, you don’t love me.’
BARBARA WALTERS Much of her life was trying to find that love, wasn’t it?
PATRICK JEPHSON I think that’s true.
BARBARA WALTERS Do you think she ever did?
PATRICK JEPHSON No.
BARBARA WALTERS Do you think she could?
PATRICK JEPHSON I think the only person who is going to make her happy was herself.
BARBARA WALTERS So much of what the princess did had to do with her relationship to the needy, to the poor, to the sick, to the insane. How much of this was genuine and how much of this was to fill a private need?
PATRICK JEPHSON Her compassion was genuine. But sometimes it took second place, yes, to the need to fill something in herself. But, ironically, that’s what made her so good at it.
BARBARA WALTERS What do you mean?
PATRICK JEPHSON If she didn’t have that need, if she didn’t feel that she understood suffering or stress or loneliness, then she wouldn’t have been able to establish that safe territory that she created for people that she spoke to who were in great need or great pain.
BARBARA WALTERS But you write, Mr. Jephson, ‘that people were toys to the princess and her public life was a game.’
PATRICK JEPHSON Some of the time, yes. But that doesn’t detract one jot from the good that was accomplished. Practically everything she did in public brought some good.
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) Although Princess Diana appeared caring and compassionate in her charity work, her staff, pictured with her here, often saw a different side. (OC) Princess Diana went through a lot of staff. In your time, you write that you saw the departure of two ladies-in-waiting, a butler, a cook, three secretaries, a chauffeur, a housemaid, two dressers and others. Why was that? Why did she keep firing these people?
PATRICK JEPHSON I think sometimes she felt that some of them got too close to her, saw her in her less-royal moments and that was hard for her to cope with. BARBARA WALTERS You had only planned to work for the princess for two years. But you remained with her for almost eight years. Since you describe the princess as being so difficult, why did you stay?
PATRICK JEPHSON It was fascinating.
BARBARA WALTERS With it all?
PATRICK JEPHSON Yep. It was the best job in the world.
BARBARA WALTERS Maybe. But when we come back, Patrick Jephson describes Princess Diana’s downward spiral and the outrageous incident that made him finally resign.
ANNOUNCER After the divorce, a princess out of control. BARBARA WALTERS You write that “she seemed to be indulging a death wish, a descent into self-destruction.”
PATRICK JEPHSON Towards the end, that was my impression, yes. (Commercial break)
BARBARA WALTERS As you have seen, Patrick Jephson was Princess Diana’s number one aide. He protected her and stood faithfully by her side, even, as he says, she became increasingly impossible to work with. For example, in 1992, midway through his royal career, Jephson watched what he called ‘a catastrophe’ unfold. (VO) A shocking biography of Princess Diana by journalist Andrew Morton stunned the world with its intimate details of Diana’s life, her miserable marriage, her eating disorders, her depression. We now know that Diana herself was the source for most of this material, but at the time, she kept Patrick Jephson in the dark. He later realized that this was the first of Diana’s many public bids for attention and sympathy. She got that, but at a price. The day after the revelations hit the papers, the princess informed Jephson that Prince Charles and she were going to separate. And this, Jephson says, set the princess on a downward spiral. (OC) Diana began to seek all kinds of advice and treatments. You write about them. Astrology, reflexology, enemas, massage, soothsaying. You write that she was “unrestrained in her appetite for it.” How did it affect you in her life?
PATRICK JEPHSON I knew that for every piece of advice that I was feeding in, she was getting indiscriminate quantities of advice from other quarters. And she would keep asking for advice until she got the advice she wanted to hear.
BARBARA WALTERS The princess’ bulimia. Did you know that she was bulimic?
PATRICK JEPHSON It dawned on me. The main thing you had to do was not act surprised when, for example, if she had to make an unscheduled loo stop or...
BARBARA WALTERS Go to the bathroom.
PATRICK JEPHSON Yeah.
BARBARA WALTERS She said she conquered it.
PATRICK JEPHSON She did say that. And I think that she wanted to believe that she had. But my impression was that it never really left her.
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) Increasingly, the princess tried to escape her problems at home through travel abroad. During his years with her, Jephson recalls making more than 30 overseas trips. Diana particularly liked the United States. (OC) What did it give her, coming to America?
PATRICK JEPHSON I think it gave her a great sense of freedom. Life in London for her could be very constrained.
BARBARA WALTERS Was there ever a possibility that she would have moved to America? That was rumored.
PATRICK JEPHSON She would speak about it.
BARBARA WALTERS What happened? She obviously didn’t.
PATRICK JEPHSON It remained a dream. I think it was a—it was a wish.
BARBARA WALTERS ‘My life would be different if I lived here’?
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes.
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) The princess, of course, stayed in England where her marital problems remained public fodder. Then, in 1994, a stunning confession from an unexpected source made headlines. Prince Charles admitted in a British television interview that he had been unfaithful to his wife with Camilla Parker Bowles. (Beginning of footage from Prince Charles’ British television interview)
1ST REPORTER Did you try to be faithful and honorable to your wife when you took on the vow of marriage?
PRINCE CHARLES Yes. Absolutely.
1ST REPORTER And you were?
PRINCE CHARLES Yes. Until it became irretrievably broken down. (End of footage)
BARBARA WALTERS What was Diana’s reaction to this?
PATRICK JEPHSON I think there was a deep sense of being justified in many of her own feelings.
BARBARA WALTERS You tried many times to have the princess publicly forgive Prince Charles, yes?
PATRICK JEPHSON I suggested it a couple of times, yes.
BARBARA WALTERS She didn’t do it?
PATRICK JEPHSON No.
BARBARA WALTERS You never thought that they would ever get together again as man and wife.
PATRICK JEPHSON Initially, I had felt that it would have been possible to carry on a facade of marriage.
BARBARA WALTERS The way kings and queens or princes and princesses had done in the past?
PATRICK JEPHSON One of her worst criticisms of any situations was to say that it was dishonest.
BARBARA WALTERS So, she could not have the role of the wife without really being the wife.
PATRICK JEPHSON It offended a fundamental sense of justice in her.
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) She avoided public appearances with the prince. But according to Jephson, Princess Diana was floundering, unable to carve out a new, independent role for herself. He tried to help her start her own foundation but said the princess lacked the discipline to see it through. By this time, he writes, “Diana’s demons and her misguided desire for freedom caused her to throw off anything that might tie her down.” (OC) In 1994, Princess Diana made a rather surprising decision. She dispensed with her police bodyguards, accepted very public engagements. Why did she do this?
PATRICK JEPHSON I think by that stage, she had become almost reckless in her disregard for herself. There was a desire for victim-hood sometimes or at least a desire for sympathy.
BARBARA WALTERS You write that “she seemed to be indulging a death wish, a descent into self-destruction.”
PATRICK JEPHSON Towards the end, that was my impression, yes. Everything that she had built, she seemed intent on dismantling.
BARBARA WALTERS Princess Diana’s most destructive act, according to Jephson, came a year later. In 1995, without consulting him or anyone else, Diana gave a devastatingly personal interview to the BBC program, “Panorama.” (Beginning of footage from “Panorama”)
2ND REPORTER Do you think you will ever be queen?
PRINCESS DIANA No, I don’t. No. I’d like to be a queen of people’s hearts. Someone’s got to go out there and love people and show it.
2ND REPORTER Do you think the Prince of Wales will ever be king?
PRINCESS DIANA Because I know the character, I would think that the top job, as I call it, would bring enormous limitations to him. I don’t know whether he could adapt to that. (End of footage)
BARBARA WALTERS As you watched the program, how did you feel?
PATRICK JEPHSON I saw somebody who questioned her husband’s suitability to be king, who was reckless in disclosing her own feelings and doubts about her own role and her own relationships. The queen of hearts, a name that she gave herself, was at complete odds with what I had wanted to help her become—I figure in her own right, but nevertheless able to draw on the strength and continuity of the British crown. And that is what she threw away with the “Panorama.”
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) After the “Panorama” interview, the queen sent a letter to Prince Charles and Princess Diana, urging them to get divorced. Jephson says that Diana didn’t want the divorce but recognized that it had become inevitable. He says he stayed on to try to salvage some type of royal life for her, but he writes, “her behavior became increasingly odd.”
PATRICK JEPHSON She became, I thought, paranoid. She felt that she was being eavesdropped on, that she had the brakes of her car cut, and even that somebody tried to take a pot shot at her. Now, all those things, I knew to be untrue.
BARBARA WALTERS They were untrue?
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes. I had them checked out. I mean, they were serious allegations.
BARBARA WALTERS You write, “she was charming and foul by turns, but recently it always seemed to be the foul that came up at the top.” Out of control?
PATRICK JEPHSON Increasingly, yes.
BARBARA WALTERS Unstable?
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes.
BARBARA WALTERS Shortly before you left, you report that Diana made a very cruel slur to the nanny Prince Charles had hired to look after the two young princes, a young woman named Tiggy Legg-Bourke. What did Diana do?
PATRICK JEPHSON She said to Tiggy at a—at a staff Christmas lunch, ‘So sorry about the baby.’
BARBARA WALTERS There was no baby. What she was implying was that Tiggy had had an abortion.
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes.
BARBARA WALTERS And she wanted people to think this.
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes.
BARBARA WALTERS And it was untrue?
PATRICK JEPHSON Totally untrue. That was the final straw for me.
BARBARA WALTERS You knew you couldn’t stay.
PATRICK JEPHSON Yeah.
BARBARA WALTERS Shortly after that, the princess, you felt, began to slur you.
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes. She was trying to slur me as I had seen her try to slur other people.
BARBARA WALTERS What’d she do?
PATRICK JEPHSON She sent a message on my pager.
BARBARA WALTERS Anonymously?
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes. Anonymously. But I knew very well where it came from.
BARBARA WALTERS What did it say?
PATRICK JEPHSON It accused me of having an affair and it accused me of disloyalty, both of which I knew to be untrue.
BARBARA WALTERS Did you confront her?
PATRICK JEPHSON I did.
BARBARA WALTERS What happened?
PATRICK JEPHSON I got the answer that I dreaded, rather. But it also confirmed what I knew. If she was defensive, she would answer a question with a question. So she said, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Then she said, ‘You should ignore it. I get them all the time.’
BARBARA WALTERS And you know, though, that it was meant.
PATRICK JEPHSON I knew. Not only that my career with her was finished but that she was out to do me damage.
BARBARA WALTERS (VO) Jephson also had other reasons for leaving. He realized that continuing to serve Princess Diana would begin to put him in conflict with the queen. And his first loyalty was to the institution of the monarchy. (OC) After you resigned, you met privately with the queen.
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes.
BARBARA WALTERS What did she say at that meeting? Can you tell us?
PATRICK JEPHSON I can’t tell you.
BARBARA WALTERS Was she sympathetic to what happened with you?
PATRICK JEPHSON She was.
BARBARA WALTERS You write that Princess Diana tried to undermine your efforts to find other employment after you quit.
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes. She was very vindictive. By the end, it was a race as to whether or not I could resign before she publicly slurred me.
BARBARA WALTERS In other words, she was going to say to the press, ‘He was no good.’ And you had to resign before she said, ‘I fired him.’
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes.
BARBARA WALTERS Diana had no bodyguards of her own in the end when she was killed in Paris. If she had kept her police bodyguards, do you think she would be alive today?
PATRICK JEPHSON They wouldn’t have let her get in the car.
BARBARA WALTERS They would have known that the driver was drinking?
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes. And that was one of the most painful things, certainly, that I saw, was the fact that her protection officers, who were utterly dedicated to her, should see her die when she was beyond their protection.
BARBARA WALTERS It’s now been three years since Diana’s death, and millions of people around the world still do idolize her. Are you concerned that your book will tarnish her image?
PATRICK JEPHSON No. Because to idolize her, for one thing, is not what she would have wanted. And for another, it’s not the truth.
BARBARA WALTERS What do you think is the legacy?
PATRICK JEPHSON The legacy, I hope, is that people remember her as a real human being, with great compassion, great strength, great goodness, and a few very human flaws.
BARBARA WALTERS Is that how you remember her?
PATRICK JEPHSON Yes.
BARBARA WALTERS The book, “Shadows of a Princess,” will be out Monday.
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