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CIA sez 'it's not us' but NSA admits vacuuming up info
BY AUSTIN FENNER in New York, JAMES GORDON MEEK in Washington and ELLEN TUMPOSKY in LondonDAILY NEWS WRITERS

Princess Diana may have been secretly taped while on plane with Teddy Forstmann.
-->The newest mystery in the massively investigated death of Princess Diana is why American intelligence allegedly eavesdropped on her phone calls.
Reports in the British press claim that the results of an official probe into the Paris car crash that killed her on Aug. 31, 1997, along with boyfriend Dodi Fayed will reveal that the U.S. was listening to her phone calls. The eavesdropping - without British permission - was right up to her death, including calls from the Ritz Hotel, where she was staying that night, according to leaks from the report.
That report will be released Thursday.
The CIA and Secret Service denied yesterday listening in on Diana's calls.
"It's not us, it's not us," a CIA official implored. "What intelligence value could she possibly have had?"
The National Security Agency said it never targeted Diana for eavesdropping, but indicated her name was mentioned in calls by other people it was monitoring.
"The idea of anybody tapping her phones is ridiculous," said another top intelligence official with access to the most secret overseas reporting. "The NSA ... had much more important things to do then."
Officials said it is possible that the NSA - called the "great vacuum cleaner in the sky" by one source - could have accidentally picked up telephone intercepts of Diana while targeting someone else, such as another Ritz Hotel guest.
One theory that has emerged is that the secret listening prompted the British authorities to put an end to Diana's plans to spend the summer of 1997 in the Hamptons with her onetime New York boyfriend, millionaire financier Teddy Forstmann, because it would be a security risk for her two princely sons.
A source close to Forstmann told the Daily News yesterday that Diana may have been overheard while traveling with Forstmann on his private plane, which Forstmann believed was bugged by the feds to listen in on his rich and powerful friends.
She asked Forstmann to help her find a summer place in the Hamptons, the source said. The princess later called to tell Forstmann to drop the search.
"Don't bother [trying to find me a place]," she told Forstmann, according to the source. "There's no point in looking. They won't let me come. It's a security hazard."
Some Brits were skeptical that the Americans were worried about Diana's safety in the Hamptons.
"If this is true, there needs to be some explanation," said Andrew MacKinlay, a Labor Party member of Parliament. "That's a feeble excuse. They've got to do better than that."
The princess ended up instead taking a vacation on the yacht of Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed and became involved with his son Dodi, a romance that led to her death. Originally published on December 12, 2006

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