CNN/Time Impact

Untold Stories of U.S. Solders in the Vietnam War; Yasser Arafat's Private Life; Vital Clues Into the Death of Princess Diana

Aired September 14, 1997 - 9:00 p.m. ET

BERNARD SHAW, HOST: Welcome to this new season of IMPACT. Every week at this hour, we bring you stories about the people, the action, the events that will shape lives, and affect the world. We begin with the legacy of the Vietnam War. The men you're about to meet were members of an operation that was among the most tightly held war secrets. Officially, they didn't even exist. Secret warriors conducted combat operations inside North Vietnam, and even in neighboring Laos and Cambodia, countries officially off-limits to U.S. forces. Correspondent Peter Arnett has the untold stories of U.S. soldiers used intentionally as bait; chemical agents used, though banned by international protocol and American troops possibly killed by U.S. air strikes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETER ARNETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fort Bragg, North Carolina, U.S. Special Forces advanced training exercises, the home base of the U.S. Army's Special Operations Command. The men you see here are honing their Green Beret fighting skills. Immediate action drills, automatic weapons practice, high altitude jumps, stalking, training so tough, most who aspire to be special operators never make the cut.

(on camera) During the Vietnam war, U.S. Special Forces soldiers like these performed many of the same maneuvers behind enemy lines, often under constant enemy fire. Their assignment was to gather intelligence and impede the enemy on its way down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. These secret soldiers were men of SOG. SOG to the public meant the Studies and Observations Group, supposedly a bunch of bookworms. Not these guys -- SOG teams fought the secret war in rain forests and jungles of Laos, Cambodia, and even North Vietnam. At one of president John F. Kennedy's first National Security Council meetings, he personally had demanded the creation of an elite, top secret team, who could stick it to the enemy in their own backyard, and perform crucial reconnaissance.

GEN. WILLIAM TANGNEY, U.S. ARMY: It was top secret. Top secret, limited distribution. And all activities in any of the organization were very heavily compartmented so that you had access to that very small discreet piece that you are involved in.

ARNETT: SOG -- so classified it was totally blacked out, its existence denied by American officials. Without the knowledge of Congress, or the American public, SOG was formed to carry out covert paramilitary operations on what the world was told was neutral territory. Retired Major General John Singlaub, then an Army Colonel, was chief of SOG operations from 1966-68.

JOHN SINGLAUB, MAJ. GEN U.S. ARMY (RET): The treaties that had been signed in the early sixties said that the U.S. would stay out of Laos and Cambodia. We did not admit we were operating in those areas and we went to great lengths to conceal what we were doing.

ARNETT: Former team leader John Plaster has now written a book about SOG.

JOHN PLASTER, AUTHOR, FORMER SOG TEAM LEADER: It was unknown, not merely to the public or the media, it was unknown to all the other units in Vietnam. Everything from using indigenous agents in North Vietnam operating as little special operations espionage teams, to American-led Green Beret teams attempting to rescue downed pilots in North Vietnam.

ED WOLCOFF, FORMER SOG TEAM LEADER: The kinds of things you see on the screen that Schwarzenhegger may do or Sylvester Stall one might do, I actually got to do. It was the greatest adventure of my life.

ARNETT: Today, Ed Wolcoff works for a Government subcontractor, but 28 years ago he was a SOG team leader running recon missions in Laos.

WOLCOFF: That vegetation was so dense that you could not see, literally, your hand in front of your face at night. It was total pitch darkness. We could carry somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 pounds of equipment on us. And from the moment you hit the ground, you were being hunted.

ARNETT: Ed Wolcoff's team was larger than most SOG teams, and more heavily armed. Wolcoff himself carried a meat cleaver, in addition to a whole range of other weapons.

WOLCOFF: It turns out that the rules of engagement in our area of operations were unlimited. That's what we were told, which meant anything goes. We would expect no mercy if we got caught.

ARNETT: Under the cloak of extreme secrecy, SOG became a laboratory for cutting edge weaponry. Not surprisingly, this experimentation was top secret.

PLASTER: Deniability was a major concern. That means that you have to allow the United States the ability to deny you ever even there.

ARNETT: To provide their senior commanders and the White House with plausible deniability of their activities, SOG teams could not carry anything that would mark them as American, not even dog tags. It was called "going in sterile."

SINGLAUB: We didn't allow them to use regular U.S. clothing. We had special clothing that didn't have U.S. marks in it.

ARNETT: Ed Wolcoff, shown here, frequently wore black fatigues causing him to lose protection of the Geneva Convention, governing the humane treatment of P.O.W.s. SOG teams frequently carried foreign-

made silenced weapons. This picture here shows a special boot, created by the CIA to help SOG teams deceive enemy trackers. All of this deception also directly countered the Geneva Convention. General Singlaub claims new approaches were vital.

SINGLAUB: I had requested that I be provided, through the scientific community, an incapacitating agent.

ARNETT: But these chemical agents were prohibited by international treaties. Singlaub knew this and demanded them anyway. The Pentagon eventually armed some SOG teams with darts filled with chemicals, gas canisters and full body protective gear.

MATTHEW MESELSON, BIOCHEMIST, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: If it's true, then certainly the dart gun violated international law; that's a war crime.

SINGLAUB: An incapacitating agent is where you incapacitate everyone temporarily and then you sort out the guys that are armed from the ones that are not. That's certainly more humanitarian than killing everyone.

WOMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You have agreed with me that incapacitating agent could cause paralysis of some kind?

SINGLAUB: Oh yes, yes. Absolutely yes. That's what it does. You stop functioning and your muscles are not under control, even if your mind might be alert. It essentially puts you to sleep and you are limp.

ARNETT: Singlaub describes several incapacitating agents in SOG's arsenal as, "affecting the human nervous system." He also claims, some could "permanently" incapacitate. Singlaub admits the chemicals were sometimes lethal. Matthew Meselson is a leading authority on chemical weapons and the treaties that govern them.

MESELSON: If we used lethal agents, we ourselves by our own words would have said that was prohibited by the Geneva Protocol. And we had claimed we were abiding by the Geneva Protocol, so if that was customary international law, that would also be a war crime.

SINGLAUB: I think that there is a very definite place in our security policy for incapacitating agents. And it's a humanitarian thing, not something that should be considered evil.

ARNETT (on camera): the Geneva Protocol prohibits the use of potentially lethal chemical weapons. This includes chemical incapacitating agents. But, the U.S. Government did not ratify the treaty until 1975.

(voice-over): Despite such surprising revelations about the use of chemical agents, the main mission of SOG was supposedly reconnaissance. Running recon in a triple canopy forest with the enemy all around was tough, even for men in their physical prime. Anything that moved, even civilians, was considered a probable enemy. Seen here for the first time ever on television, the only known moving pictures of a secret SOG mission in action, an extraction high in the

hills of Laos. It's almost impossible to see the SOG team hidden underneath the dense foliage. Under constant fire, SOG teams would be extracted by helicopter on dangling ropes, shaky ladders and contraptions called stabo rings.

SOG MISSION ON VIDEO: Hold your hover.

Pickup made.

Let's get the hell out of here.

(COMBAT NOISE IN THE BACKGROUND)

ARNETT: From 1966 as the conventional war heated up, so did the unconventional cross border secret war. But increasingly, team leaders found their recon missions compromised -- detected immediately.

PLASTER: At times we had more than 100 percent casualties within a single year. That means every single man was killed, wounded or missing in action.

ARNETT: Today, General Singlaub admits the detection was sometimes the goal.

SINGLAUB: That's what you do when you sent out a reconnaissance patrol. You go put some bait out there and wait for the enemy to fire upon them, then you know where the enemy is.

ARNETT: SOG teams were often bait, intentionally used to locate enemy troops and to draw them out of hiding. The next phase: to hammer the enemy with air attack. Sometimes SOG teams got hammered as well.

WOLCOFF: When we did lose an American out in Laos and were unable to recover his body, typically, the following day there would be a B-52 strike on the location where he was last seen.

ARNETT: Tell us for what reason there would be a B-52 strike there?

WOLCOFF: I can only tell you what I was told, which is if assumed dead or assumed captured, there was retribution, and secondly, they didn't want the American to be captured for political purposes and then paraded in front of news cameras, and the issue of our being in a third country exposed.

ARNETT: 30 years later, it's still an explosive charge. The general overseeing Army Special Forces training, himself a SOG Vietnam Vet, claims air strikes were never intended to take American lives.

TANGNEY: The standard practice was to make every effort to recover an individual, whether he was MIA or KIA. Now, obviously you get to a certain point, for example, if you have someone missing in action when tactically it's just no longer feasible to get into an area, then maybe it's not all unlikely that because of large masses of the enemy, there may have been some sort of air strike that was done on a fairly surgical basis against a definable target.

ARNETT: General Singlaub is just one of several U.S. officials who confirm that SOG losses were considered acceptable casualties of war. The soldiers of SOG knew the odds against them.

SINGLUAB: They understood that there will be times when they might be asked to survive a B-52 strike, rather than run the risk of positive capture.

WOMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: At, at least some place along the chain of command below you, they were told that this would happen?

SINGLAUB: I'm sure that's true.

WOMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So what would likely happen to a SOG team caught underneath a B-52 strike?

SINGLAUB: Well, the probabilities are very high that they would be blown to bits. (bombing sounds) It is the most obvious earthshaking, bone rattling activity you could ever imagine.

ARNETT: Not surprisingly, SOG is believed to have endured the most heavy casualties of any unit of the entire war. Former team leader John Plaster still wonders about the fate of his friend, Pete Wilson, also known as Fat Albert. In an act of courage, he stayed behind to aid a wounded team member.

PLASTER: Rather than risk the whole team, he sent everyone else ahead and stayed behind with that yard and the last that anybody heard of Fat Albert, the last thing ever heard was his voice on his emergency radio calling may day.

ARNETT: Plaster believes Pete Wilson was captured. But with the revelation that it was "paramount" that SOG members not be captured alive by the enemy, questions still linger about his ultimate fate. Only today, 30 years later, is the real story of SOG starting to be told. A secret war. Soldiers used intentionally as bait. Americans caught in American air strikes. Chemical agents used in combat. A legacy of pride and a legacy of grief.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SHAW: Initially the Pentagon confirmed to IMPACT that SOG teams did indeed employ a chemical incapacitating agent called BZ. The Pentagon later amended that statement to say that SOG merely had ready access to agent BZ. According to their spokesperson, agent BZ is a nonlethal chemical agent which temporarily causes paralysis and psychosis. But, chemical weapons experts we consulted say agent BZ can have lethal side effects.

We'll be back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FRAZIER: Next, we turn to the Middle East, which has exploded back into the news again because of violence and death. It was four years ago this very weekend that Israeli and Palestinian leaders shook hands on the White House lawn and promised to work for peace.

Now U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is putting pressure on both sides to deliver on that promise, in particular, pressuring Yasser Arafat to do what he can to end terrorism. Arafat has lived his entire public life under intense pressure. Tonight, a rare conversation about that life, as contributing correspondent Nancy Collins speaks with Suha Arafat, wife of the Palestinian president.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NANCY COLLINS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Suha Arafat is the woman behind the man who holds one half of the future of the Middle East in his hands. As the first lady of Palestine, she champions the cause of children, health care and women's rights. But like other first ladies, she also wields power privately.

SUHA ARAFAT, YASSER ARAFAT'S WIFE: Sometimes we have big discussions, and I would tell him the truth, because people around him have also a tendency to say, you are great, everything is great. And I told him I would be the only person who would tell him the truth to his face, because I have no interest.

COLLINS: No self-interest?

ARAFAT: No self-interest.

COLLINS: Does he listen to you?

ARAFAT: I think he would not -- no man would show the woman that he would listen to her.

(LAUGHTER)

COLLINS: That's true.

ARAFAT: They would not -- he would just have it in his mind.

COLLINS: Central to the mind of both Arafats is the turbulence in the Middle East. And especially the recent bombings.

ARAFAT: I think whoever did the bombing, they are the enemies of peace. They are the enemies of peace, that they don't want the peace process to continue, and Israel is going with the game.

COLLINS: The game, she says, is Israel's collective punishment of the Palestinian people -- sealing off the borders, preventing workers from going to their jobs and bringing home their paychecks.

ARAFAT: We cannot punish the whole people because of a terrorist act which has been done in Israel. We cannot punish the whole Palestinian population.

COLLINS: Well, you realize one of the public relations problems that your husband has, is: people still think of him, whether he was or not, as a terrorist.

ARAFAT: It is a relative term -- terrorism. There always is a difference between terrorism and freedom fighters. Arafat was incorrectly and injustly called a terrorist, and a terrorist came to have the Nobel prize.

COLLINS: That Nobel Prize for peace was awarded in 1994. From warrior to peacemaker -- such are the contradictions of Yasser Arafat, who, seven years ago, at age 60, married the then-27-year-old graduate of the Sorbonne. It was the first marriage for both.

COLLINS: Why did he wait so long?

ARAFAT: Because -- I know now why he would wait so long -- because I don't think anybody would -- can face a life like this or can live a very difficult life like this. I am not a demanding person, and I think the wife of Yasser Arafat has not to be a demanding person, in order to live this way of life.

COLLINS: And what a life it is. For starters, there's his schedule. Yasser Arafat travels incessantly, and when he's home, he never sleeps before 5:00 A.M. There are the bodyguards. Even Mrs. Arafat uses an armored car, accompanied always by a phalanx of men with machine guns. Then there's the living arrangement in their rented house in Gaza. She spends her time with their daughter, Zahwa (ph) on the comfortably decorated second floor. While he insists on remaining true to the revolution -- residing on the Spartan first floor he shares with guards and guns.

And so, he still lives downstairs in the way he did in his single days, and he allowed you to build this really lovely addition on top, which is very feminine, and very colorful.

ARAFAT: After a discussion, he did not want -- he wanted us to be downstairs. I said, I would not let my daughter -- all the time she is surrounded by bodyguards, but I would not let her live with the bodyguards downstairs, so I ...

COLLINS: ...The president never comes up here?

ARAFAT: No, no, I go down.

COLLINS: Has he ever been up here?

ARAFAT: No, once, maybe to see the little baby when she was sick only, but he does not -- he keeps his own room, his own things. His own -- you know, it is like he feels like a bachelor.

Everybody has to keep space in one's life. The marriage works more if you have your own space. If Yasser Arafat wants to stay all day at home, I can't stand is it because I have my own liberty now, my own space in my house.

COLLINS: Suha Arafat's need for liberty comes naturally. Her father was a wealthy Christian financier on the West Bank. Her mother, Raymonda Tawil (ph), was a crusading journalist, feminist, and Palestinian activist, whom the press nicknamed, "The Tigress." Suha first heard of the legendary Arafat at age 5, first met him at 18, and by 25 was working for him.

There was just work?

ARAFAT: Just work -- no there was admiration, and one -- in Paris he asked me to get married to him. And I did not hesitate, I said yes, and we got married. I don't know if I did a good choice or a bad choice.

(LAUGHTER)

COLLINS: You did an interesting choice. I mean, this man came with an extremely complicated life?

ARAFAT: You know when you are young -- the revolution, the PLO, liberty to have -- to work in a very nice, you know, traveling, having all people surrounding you, living history -- it was very interesting.

COLLINS: You had chemistry?

ARAFAT: I had chemistry, and I said yes, not knowing what is waiting for me afterwards.

COLLINS: When you first got married, you had to keep the marriage secret for two years. Why?

ARAFAT: Because of various reasons. I think my husband did not get used to the idea of getting married. Now he has a young, beautiful wife, sorry to say beautiful, but this is the term. So it is how he has to explain this to everybody.

COLLINS: Did you tell anyone, your family?

ARAFAT: No, nobody knew. It was terrible for me because when you are married to a man and the entourage will say, it's his mistress, it's too much.

COLLINS: Who?

ARAFAT: The political entourage of the PLO, which is gossiping all the time. And you could not say that he is my husband, I am not the mistress.

COLLINS: You must have had got some real thick skin to get through that.

ARAFAT: Yes, I had to pass through a lot of suffering.

COLLINS: A lot of suffering, in terms of your identity, or in terms of your ...

ARAFAT: ...yes, you have to justify, and I hate to justify. I have my own convictions, I have my own confidence in myself, and I would never justify to anybody, anything.

FRAZIER: And here, we take a break. When we come back, more of what Suha Arafat told IMPACT's Nancy Collins about being married to a man who is married to a revolution.

ANNOUNCER: Later on IMPACT, questions about the death of a princess. A firsthand account from a doctor who tried in vain to help the princess. Vital clues into the unanswered questions surrounding the death of Princess Diana.

IMPACT, CNN AND "Time" on special assignment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FRAZIER: Back now to the private side of Yasser Arafat's life in the turbulence of the Middle East -- a life which is something of a mystery to most of us. Arafat has so long stood as a symbol of Palestinian hopes that details of his family life were not widely known. But not long ago, he started a family. Here's Nancy Collins again with more from Arafat's young wife Suha.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS (voice-over): For the last 30 years, Yasser Arafat has been the father of the Palestinian movement. Two years ago, at age 65, he experienced fatherhood in a more conventional way. And just as controversy followed his political life, it permeated his private life, when his wife chose to have daughter Zahwa, not in Palestine, but in Paris.

COLLINS: Was your husband able to come to the birth?

ARAFAT: Yes, he came not the first day. He came the second day. He made an appointment with the French president. And he had the phone. And he popped to the hospital. It has to be also justification, all our lives are justification.

COLLINS: Because he feels he must always be working for the country?

ARAFAT: Yes. And he popped in to see me twice a day, in the morning and at night.

COLLINS: What did he say about this baby?

ARAFAT: He liked her. She resembled him so much. I was laughing as I was looking at her. I don't know, Yasser, how she is going to get married. She resembles you so much.

(LAUGHTER)

COLLINS: Does she not think it odd that her daddy never comes upstairs, for instance?

ARAFAT: She goes downstairs to him every day.

(LAUGHTER)

She does not know this question yet. But she goes all the time to him. It is a strange relationship. She sees this man 10 minutes in the morning. And he goes surrounded by bodyguards. And she sees

his pictures on the TV. She sees his pictures in the parks. And she says, poppa, but she does not understand what is this man. And sometimes when he does not put his kaffiah on him, she does not know him.

COLLINS: Is he comfortable around this little person?

ARAFAT: No, no. Because she refuses to go to him. She refuses. Like this, she has a vengeance, because she does not see him. And she knows that he is going 10 minutes after, that she will not say hello to him sometimes.

COLLINS: How does he react to that?

ARAFAT: I think it bothers him. It bothers him a lot.

COLLINS: What bothers Suha Arafat is the risk to her husband's life. Magnified, she says, by an Israeli Government she believes is no longer interested in peace.

ARAFAT: And when they say he is not the man we can deal with, it means it is an open war on Yasser Arafat. And all that they are doing now is trying to discredit him in front of his own people. And Israelis are pushing for the end of Yasser Arafat.

COLLINS: Are you more frightened now for his life now than ever before?

ARAFAT: Yes. Because after Rabin died, I asked myself, and I have been looking to all my friends' wives of heads of state, whose husbands have died, and I thought to myself, goodness, who is going to be the next widow in the Middle East. And who -- on which one this time the finger will point. I try not to think about it. I try not to think about it. But I think I might be one of them.

COLLINS: Do you love this man?

ARAFAT: Yes.

COLLINS: Mrs. Arafat, do you as a woman get enough from this man personally, like attention, time?

ARAFAT: No, no, I would tell you no, but I can't understand why not. I can't understand. With all this attention, with all this, we become more attached to each other, I will tell you.

COLLINS: Really?

ARAFAT: Yes. With all the crisis, we become more attached. He is more attached to his daughter. But it is a matter of time. He is not here today. He is not here tomorrow. He will be in the West Bank, but I can understand this.

COLLINS: Has marriage to such an extraordinary and unusual man giving you this unusual life been worth it?

ARAFAT: Yes, I think it is worth it. In spite of all the suffering, it is worth it. You feel that you are living history. And you are writing history.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRAZIER: It's history where idyllic moments like that walk on the beach have been eclipsed by scenes of bloodshed. And though American diplomats worked hard during the past week to restart the peace process, they left frustrated at their lack of progress. We'll be right back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FRAZIER: New details are emerging about the night Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were killed in a car accident in Paris two weeks ago, details provided by the first doctor on the scene, a passerby who stopped to help. With our CNN and "Time" magazine joint investigation, here's Art Harris.

ART HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Play back the images from that tragic night. Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed arrive at the Ritz. And there's the man who would drive them, Henri Paul. To dodge paparazzi, they leave out the back door, speed off into the night, pass the Place De La Concorde, hurdling toward death in this tunnel.

What's striking about that night is how many questions remain. If Henri Paul was drunk, why was he driving? Just who made that decision? And what happened at the scene of the wreck as Princess Diana lay dying?

DR. FREDERICK MAYED (PH): I tried to make her feel comfortable.

HARRIS: That night Dr. Frederick Mayed was going the tunnel the other way when he saw the crash, a mangled car, bodies and blood. Trained as an emergency physician, he parked and called for help.

MAYED: I said there is a severe car crash here on the Pont De L'alma. There are two people severely injured. I need two emergency ambulances.

HARRIS: Mayed grabbed his doctor's bag, ran back to the wreck. There he found the driver and one passenger dead. A volunteer fireman was working on a man badly injured in the front seat. The woman in the back was down on the floor. Her head bent forward. He lifted it and gave her oxygen.

MAYED: She had difficulties to breathe. And she moved a little bit. So I helped her to breathe.

HARRIS: He had no idea who she was, only remembers people behind him taking pictures. He heard someone say, talk to her in English.

MAYED: I began to ask her some questions. And I began to give her some comfort with some words, yeah.

HARRIS: Mayed won't say if she responded or what she might have said. That's confidential, doctor-patient relationship. Anything he has to say, he'll tell Diana's sons or Prince Charles.

MAYED: The most important would be for them, I guess, to know how she was during her last moment. And that would be my duty to do that.

HARRIS: He struggled to keep her alive for were 15 minutes. It seemed an eternity as he waited for the rescue squads to arrive. Only later did he find out who she was, that she died at the hospital and wonder like the rest of the world why the wreck had happened at all.

Have you thought about this since?

MAYED: Sure, every minute, every hour of day.

OAUL HANDLEY GREAVES, FAYED SECURITY CHIEF: 10:08, Mr. Paul returns to the hotel in his car. He walks into the hotel.

HARRIS: Paul had been away from the Ritz for three hours, called back after thinking he was off for the night. Police in Paris are trying to reconstruct those missing three hours, grilling the employees at the Ritz about Paul's drinking habits, if he had anything at the hotel that night, questioning people in bars in his nearby neighborhood.

Sources tell CNN Paul had become a trusted member of Dodi Fayed's entourage -- assistant security manager at the Ritz. But our "Time" magazine colleague Tom Sancton reveals Paul was also a drinker who apparently hid it well.

TOM SANCTON, TIME: How you explain it is that he was maybe something of a pub crawler, an occasional drinker, who would have a few drinks there, a few drinks there.

HARRIS: "Time" magazine tracked Paul to Harry's New York Bar.

SANCTON: The owner denies he was there, but we have at least two sources on staff, who said, yes, he was in there from 7:30 roughly to about 9:45. During that period according to one of the bartenders, he had two or three whiskeys.

HARRIS: Add to that a couple more drinks "Time" magazine found, Paul had earlier the at hotel.

GREAVES: He's not swaying around. He's not leaning or anything. On a couple of occasions, he jogs up the stairs to the imperial suite, hands in his pocket, quite jauntily, clearly not the actions of a man who is under the influence of alcohol.

HARRIS: Yet, here's a man who according to three blood tests was not only way over the legal minute, but had traces of two prescription drugs in his blood. How can he look somber to colleagues? Even the Fayed family doesn't dispute Henri Paul could have been drunk when he got back to the Ritz.

MICHAEL COLE, FAYED FAMILY SPOKESMAN: Well, naturally, Mohamed is shocked. He's appalled. He's outraged that a man in that condition could get into a car and present himself to work in that way.

HARRIS: It's still not clear who wanted Paul to drive Dodi and Diana that night.

GREAVES: You see Mr. Henri Paul checking the road for paparazzi.

HARRIS: Back at the Ritz, the couple wound up dining together in the $8,000 a night imperial suite.

GREAVES: They are now leaving the imperial suite.

HARRIS: By midnight, Paul swung into action. He snuck them out the back on to the route.

GREAVES: The cars are pulling away quite steadily and quite normally.

HARRIS: Decoy cars out front tried to fool the paparazzi. Fayed officials claim video shows they got tipped and gave chase.

GREAVES: At this very time when the car was pulling away, people were shouting: "they're leaving!"

HARRIS: But some photographers say they chased the wrong car, and came on the accident only by chance. Others say Paul not only dared him to catch him, but left him in the dust. Paris limousine driver Frederick Chevaye (ph) never tries to outrun paparazzi in the streets. He says it's a race you can't win.

FREDERRICK CHEVAYE, DRIVER: You put pedal on the metal and two people died, for what? For nothing, for nothing.

HARRIS: He drove us on the same route Henri Paul took Dodi and Princess Diana onto the Place De La Concorde and into the tunnel. It veers to the left. At the high speed, police gets Paul was going when he crashed, Chevaye says you would never make it.

CHEVAYE: The paparazzi and the high speed are not a good match. Definitely not a good match. It's three reasons to go straight on the road.

HARRIS: Just how close were paparazzi when Paul sped into the tunnel and lost control? "Time" magazine's Tom Sancton talked to one man who got to the crash scene even ahead of the Doctor Mayed.

SANCTON: No big crowds of photographers. He didn't see any motorcycles. So this is maybe a minute or two, three after the accident. It tends to corroborate with a lot of what the photographers were saying was it that car outran them.

HARRIS: It was at this point the Doctor Mayed into the tunnel, desperate to save the life of a woman he didn't know was a princess. Soon after Paris rescue doctors took over, Diana was still alive.

Only the next morning did he learn his patient died a few hours later at the hospital and that she was princess Diana.

HARRIS: You did your bests a doctor.

MAYED: Sure.

HARRIS: And yet it haunts you. Why?

MAYED: Because it was a severe accident, because this young princess died. I'm sure the first tragedy is that this young lady died. And her two sons are without their mother now. That's a first tragedy.

FRAZIER: Bernie will be back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SHAW: Last week, we focused on one of the tributes to Diana, that sprung from the outpouring of grief over her death. Now comes the somber task of clearing away the mountain of flowers and gifts. London's Royal Park services says there are so many flowers in front of the royal palaces, it will take weeks to remove them. And still the flowers come. Now, here's a look at what's ahead on the next IMPACT.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: A blackout drug used as a weapon to rape. Rape erased from Victims' minds, but captured on film, rape that victims will never get over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRAZIER: For IMPACT, I'm Stephen Frazier in Atlanta. Bernie?

SHAW: Stephen. And I'm Bernard Shaw in Washington. We'll see you next week on IMPACT.

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