Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain (58 page)
Read Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain Online
Authors: Tom Watson
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That afternoon, Watson posted on Twitter and Facebook a letter dated 17 May 2011 from Sue Akers saying: ‘The information regarding Mr Rees may be outside the Terms of Reference of my investigation but the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] are assessing your allegation along with others we have received to consider a way forward.’
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With Murdoch in town, earlier that day Sky News had broken the news that police had informed Rebekah Brooks that while she was editing the
Sun
in 2005 and 2006 her phone had been hacked twenty times. While ostensibly showing that the chief executive of News International was herself a victim of Glenn Mulcaire, the disclosure raised the possibility that Andy Coulson’s
News of the World
had been spying on his close friend and colleague – or perhaps, as Sky’s business editor Mark Kleinman helpfully suggested, Mulcaire had been working for another newspaper group.
1
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The
News of the World
had hacked into Milly’s inbox by 12 April, three weeks after her disappearance, at the latest. On 4 April 2002, it had even published a story based on a hacked voicemail, about a recruitment agency leaving a message on her phone. The paper wrote: ‘On March 27, six days after Milly went missing in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, the employment agency appears to have phoned her mobile.’ In the days before the story was published, the
NoW
had bullied the force, refusing to believe its explanation that the recruitment agency message was probably a hoax (it turned out to be a wrong number). The
News of the World
even played a voicemail recording from Milly’s phone to Surrey Police. Despite knowing the paper had accessed the inbox – which could have triggered the automatic deletion of evidence (because murderers sometimes leave taunting messages on victims’ phones) – Surrey took no action. Had it done so, it might have halted the
News of the World’
s phone hacking in its tracks.
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The Times
columnist David Aaranovitch would later admit: ‘If we had been covering it in any other public body we would have been down on those people [News International executives] like a ton of bricks … Our dark cousins in the tabloids are the people by and large the people who have subsidized [us] and that does create some really awkward problems for an editor at
The Times
if he wants to lam into his colleagues at the
News of the World
, when he knows that some of the money that the
News of the World
has made in profit actually funds the journalism at
The Times …’
5
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That morning, the BBC’s Nick Robinson reported that News International executives believed they had uncovered which
News of the World
journalist had sanctioned the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone – and that it was not Rebekah Brooks. Although News International claimed to have had no sight of the Mulcaire material, its internal investigation had now apparently found evidence of wrongdoing which cleared its chief executive, who was leading the investigation.
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With the story at fever pitch and demands for interviews from newspapers in China and TV stations in India, Tom Watson travelled by train to Scotland for an afternoon press conference with Tommy Sheridan’s lawyer Aamer Anwar. Before it took place, the Crown Office in Scotland announced: ‘In light of emerging developments regarding the
News of the World
, the Crown has requested Strathclyde Police to investigate the evidence given by certain witnesses in the trial of Tommy Sheridan.’ News International was now at the centre of four police inquiries: detectives were investigating whether its executives had perjured themselves. In Glasgow, Watson and Anwar announced they were handing a dossier of information to Strathclyde Police containing the
News of the World’
s orders to Steve Whittamore, extracts from Glenn Mulcaire’s notes and transcripts of evidence from executives at his trial. Watson said the concealment of emails could have influenced the jury, and told reporters: ‘Tommy Sheridan may be an innocent man.’
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Although the Whittamore files reveal multiple breaches of data protection laws, there is no evidence that he hacked phones.
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According to Murdoch’s biographer Michael Wolff those reports were incomplete: ‘She said: “James and Rebekah fucked the company”.’
3
Wolff had conducted fifty hours of interviews with an initially cooperative Murdoch for
The Man Who Owns the News
, but his biography had not been favourable; subsequently the
New York Post’
s page 6 gossip column delved into his private life, exposing an extra-marital affair. Wolff continued to be an outspoken critic.
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The US satirist Jon Stewart later joked: ‘Not so humble you couldn’t wait for your turn to talk!’
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Rupert Murdoch’s troublesome biographer Michael Wolff claimed the proprietor had misled the MPs over the extent of his involvement in his British newspapers. Wolff said the tycoon would spend up to half his day speaking to his newspaper editors in London: ‘His involvement with the papers is total. Rupert sat up there [at the committee] and they [his advisers] said, “You have got to say you are not involved with the newspapers.” And that’s what he said and that’s a lie.’
5
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Deng was later the subject of admiring newspaper profiles about Murdoch’s ‘Tiger wife’. Rupert did not want to press charges but ‘Jonnie Marbles’ was sentenced to six weeks for assault, reduced to four weeks on appeal. On the steps of the court, mockingly contrite, he said: ‘I would just like to say this has been the most humble day of my life.’
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The
Observer
was ninth; the
Guardian
not on the list at all.
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In 2004, before he became a minister, Gove was paid an unspecified advance by HarperCollins, Murdoch’s publishing arm, for a biography of the eighteenth-century politician Viscount Bolingbroke. The biography has not yet been delivered to the publishers. Between 2005 and 2009, Gove was paid £60,000 to £65,000 a year for assorted articles in
The Times
.
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In a letter to the Culture Committee that same day, July 20, Harbottle & Lewis issued a coded threat to Wapping: ‘Notwithstanding News International’s position to date, we are considering whether we can, consistently with our professional obligations and the constraints currently imposed on us by News International, assist the committee by providing substantive comments on yesterday’s evidence. If we take the view that we can properly assist the committee, we will do so within whatever timeframe assists the committee.’
John Whittingdale, the committee chairman, stepped up the pressure, telling the Commons: ‘I hope that in the light of the assurance that Rupert and James Murdoch gave us of their wish to cooperate as much as possible, the firm will review that decision and perhaps release Harbottle & Lewis from the arrangement, so that we can see the correspondence.’
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In November 2011 Nixson launched a claim against News International for £100,000 damages for unfair dismissal. News International said it had sacked him for authorizing the bribery of a prison officer guarding the Soham murderer Ian Huntley. In his claim, Nixson said bribery of public officials was routine at the paper and that, under its rules, banned only payments to criminals or witnesses in criminal trials: the
News of the World
‘frequently sanctioned payments to civil servants, members of the armed forces and prison officers’ of between £750 and £1,000 for tips and exclusives
.
The police informed Nixson that he was of no interest to their inquiries.
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The following day, 29 July, Glenn Mulcaire said any suggestion that he had acted ‘unilaterally’ was untrue. In a statement, his solicitors said: ‘As an employee he acted on the instructions of others.’ Intriguingly, they added: ‘There were also occasions when he understood his instructions were from those who genuinely wished to assist in solving crimes.’
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The Culture Committee had received two copies of Goodman’s letter, one from Harbottle & Lewis and one from News International. The News International version blanked out Goodman’s allegations that phone hacking had been openly discussed, that Tom Crone and Andy Coulson had promised he could return to his job if he did not implicate the paper in court, and that the company had continued to pay him after he pleaded guilty to stealing the secrets of the Royal Household. The version of the letter in Chapter 5 is Harbottle & Lewis’s.
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In a letter to the Culture Committee on 16 August, Burton Copeland said: ‘BCL was not instructed to carry out an investigation into “phone hacking” at the News of the World.’
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In July, a senior Conservative Party official said: ‘We can give categorical assurances that he wasn’t paid by any other source. Andy Coulson’s only salary, his only form of income, came from the party during the years he worked for the party and in government.’
1
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At the time of writing, this report has yet to be published.
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It is not known why News Corp released Farrer’s from the restrictions of client confidentiality. It may be that Farrer’s (cf. Harbottle & Lewis, page 261), considering its reputation had been unfairly tarnished by its recent activities on behalf of News International, had threatened to stretch confidentiality to its limits, or it may be that the move was part of the MSC’s attempt to distance the company from its former executives and lawyers.
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When editing the
Sun
’s showbusiness column ‘Bizarre’, Mohan had mentioned mobile phone security at a party for the most bogus showbusiness stories, the Shaftas. On 1 May 2002, the
Guardian
’s media diary reported a snippet headlined: ‘Ring, a ring a story’: ‘How appropriate that the most glamorous event in the showbusiness calendar should be sponsored by a phone company. Mohan went on to thank “Vodafone’s lack of security” for the
Mirror
’s showbusiness exclusives. Whatever does he mean?’ Mohan later told the Leveson Inquiry that he could not be 100 per cent sure that stories which had appeared in the
Sun
’s ‘Bizarre’ column had not been derived from phone hacking.
6
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She was right. Within days, the
Sun
– which also backed the campaign with its own money – had raised £100,000 for cot death research. In the twenty years since Diamond fronted the ‘Back to Sleep’ campaign urging parents to make sure babies slept on their backs, the number of cot deaths in the UK fell from 2,500 to 300 a year.
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At the time of going to press, it was still unclear why messages on Milly Dowler’s phone were deleted. It may have been as a result of the
NoW
’s hacking, or it may have been done automatically by the phone company.
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Published on 23 July 2010, it read: ‘All the girls are talking about vampire hunk R-Patz – now us fellas have our own R-Pantz. Marks & Spencer are launching a range of slim-fitting undies with blokes who wear skinny jeans in mind.’
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In the House of Commons register of interests, Blunkett disclosed that in July 2011 News International paid his family an undisclosed fee for ‘intrusion’. He did not seem to bear grudges. In January 2012, he was on a rolling six-month contract worth £49,500 a year advising News International on ‘corporate social responsibility’.
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‘The FBI made it perfectly clear that if the British police drop the ball on this they will pick it up and run with it,’ said one legal source familiar with the US investigation –
Independent on Sunday,
18 March 2012
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Some staff have left or changed jobs; most relevant position stated. It does not follow that anyone arrested will be charged with criminal offences.
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Police later said these individuals were of no interest to their inquiries
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