Dodi's Dad to Sue CIA?

By Stephen M. Silverman

08/03/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

Mohammed Al Fayed reportedly intends to sue a variety of official American agencies in an effort to subpoena documents that he insists could shed light on the Aug. 31, 1997, car crash that killed his son Dodi and Princess Diana. The Harrods department store owner is due to hold a press conference today. Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the CIA (which, along the National Security Agency and the Defense and Justice Departments, is said to be the target of Al Fayed's proposed legal action) is withholding comment until, he told Reuters, he had a chance to read the Egyptian-born tycoon's legal claim once it is filed. But he did say, "Any suggestion the CIA had anything to do with this tragedy is ludicrous." Fayed has long maintained that the British throne, in an effort to prevent his son and Diana from marrying, was behind the fatal crash. He has even gone so far as to claim that Prince Philip masterminded the accident. The British government, in denying Fayed's request for a full inquiry into the matter, referred him instead to a French investiga tion that found that the couple's driver, Henri Paul, crashed the Fayed Mercedes because he was drunk.