WHY ST JAMES'S PALACE DECIDED TO COME CLEAN

THE telephone rang in the Prince of Wales's study in Highgrove late on
Friday night. A senior aide in London warned him that the News of the World
had damaging information linking Prince Harry to under-age drinking and,
more worryingly, drug-taking.

The finely tuned press operation at St James's Palace had feared a leak
ever since Prince Harry went to the drug rehabilitation clinic in South
London at the end of July.

Prince Charles was told by the official that there was a simple choice:
they could stonewall and attempt to deny the story in the hope it would go
away; or they could co-operate and make a full admission about the illegal
antics of the wayward young prince.

Prince Charles was told that much of the information was inaccurate, based
on speculation, and from ill-informed sources. But the newspaper also had
incontrovertible evidence that Prince Harry had smoked cannabis in the shed
at the Rattlebone Inn and at Highgrove.

Prince Charles never hesitated. He ordered his aide to co-operate with the
newspaper to ensure that only accurate information was reported about his
son. The Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales had been the subject
of a stream of ill-informed, inaccurate stories, not least because their
advisers had counselled silence as the best option.

One St James's Palace aide said: "Always, the truth will out in the end. If
we had denied it, a wildly inaccurate version would have appeared and it
would have been open season on Harry. At least we were able to ensure that
the story that appeared was based on facts and we were able to disprove
much of the information they were proposing to run. It was sensible to
co-operate rather than seek to deny it, which would have meant telling lies."

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC), which has a code preventing any
unwarranted media reporting about the private lives of school-age children,
was consulted by St James's Palace. But Prince Charles had already conceded
that there was no ground for a complaint or reason to try to suppress the
story.

Guy Black, director of the PCC, said: "St James's Palace rightly recognised
that there there were important matters of public interest involved here.
There was no issue to be raised in respect of privacy under the code."

The strategy appears to have worked. The Prince of Wales was cast in a
sympathetic light. He was depicted as a father battling the same fear felt
by many other families across the country: what if their children take
drugs? Prince Charles was praised in every newspaper yesterday for the way
he responded to Prince Harry's admission. Drugs charities and the Prime
Minister also backed the decision to send Prince Harry to a rehabilitiation
clinic to see for himself the miseries caused by drug-taking.

The editorial in the News of the World was headlined "Courage of a wise and
loving dad". If Prince Charles had resorted to the old ways of the palace
and ordered a news blackout, there would have been a very different headline.