Wednesday, June 03, 2015 

Coulson: merely a liar, not a perjurer.

Andy Coulson is a liar.  Indeed, he is not just your simple, run of the mill, garden liar, telling his wife that hideous dress really does look fabulous, continuing to maintain that ex-lover Rebekah Brooks is innocent, etc.  He has repeatedly lied under oath.  He lied under oath at the phone hacking trial, before finally the biggest lie of them all, that he had no knowledge of hacking whatsoever and it had all been conducted, authorised and paid for by his underlings collapsed in his third day in the witness box.  Yes, he had listened to recordings of then home secretary David Blunkett's voicemails as played to him by chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, but he didn't know such a thing was illegal and he immediately put a stop to such a disgusting abuse of a secretary of state's privacy, honest injun.

The jury saw through it, as did everyone else.  Coulson's peformance at the Old Bailey was not however his first instance of telling the most outrageous of lies while under oath.  Called by Tommy Sheridan at the Scottish politician's own perjury trial, Coulson denied having any knowledge whatsoever of Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World's private detective phone hacker-in-chief.  At the time I asked if there had ever been an instance of someone facing a charge of perjury as a consequence of giving evidence at a perjury trial, and lo, so did it come to pass.  The case was repeatedly delayed, first by all the investigations in England into phone hacking, then by the election, lest the potential conviction of the prime minister's former head of communications for perjury while still in his employ have any desperately unfair impact on the result, but did eventually begin three weeks ago.

Coulson's acquittal today, which is of a piece with the aforementioned acquittal of Rebekah Brooks and many of the Sun journalists on charges of misconduct in public office, is not that surprising given the Scottish definition of precisely what perjury is.  What is surprising is that as with so many of these cases, the prosecution itself was unutterably lacking.  The Crown had over four years to get its case against Coulson in order, or rather, potentially, to realise that it didn't have one despite the blatancy of Coulson's untruths.  At every point Lord Burns, the presiding judge, appears to have given the Crown the benefit of the doubt: the case proceeded despite Coulson's defence lawyer, Murdo MacLeod QC advancing the exact same arguments that belatedly saw his client acquitted in closed court before the trial began.  Burns let the prosecution make its case, then decided that it had indeed completely failed to prove that Coulson's evidence in Sheridan's perjury trial had been relevant to his conviction.  In fact, it didn't really even begin to do so.

As Burns summed up, in Scotland at least, "not every lie amounts to perjury" (PDF) .  Despite what some were quick to claim, Coulson was not cleared of lying under oath.  He without a shadow of a doubt did lie under cross-examination from Tommy Sheridan.  That Coulson was prepared to risk not just his own career but also that of the man he chose to serve by doing so is a measure of his hubris and eventual nemesis.  His lies were not however integral to Sheridan being found guilty; despite Sheridan advancing the claim that he had been hacked by the News of the World, evidence given by a Metropolitan police officer contradicted the notion.  Sheridan did indeed feature in one of Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks, filled with the phone numbers and PIN codes of so many other phone hacking victims, but no further evidence was discovered to prove Sheridan was among them.  Sheridan in his summing up painted his calling of Coulson as potentially irrelevant, but justified it as necessary as part of "other issues that have to be considered, not for you, but other issues…about conduct in public life, about power about who can do things and who can break the law and get away with it". He also argued it was "a public service and a public duty to try and expose wrongdoing".

The Crown was rather in a bind.  It could hardly call Sheridan to expand on precisely what his intentions were and why in fact his questioning and Coulson's answers were relevant to the conviction.  As the Graun points out, it was the Crown's case in the original trial that any use of the dark arts against Sheridan, of which there hadn't been any anyway, was irrelevant.  To then admit that, err, perhaps there had been would be a contradiction too far and provide further ammunition to the review of his conviction.  Incompetence does still rear its head: Burns was not given the rulings made prior to and during the Sheridan trial over the admissibility of hacking evidence, which deemed it was relevant.  And while Sheridan may well not have been hacked, his associate Joan McAlpine definitely was.  There's also the question, as raised over the non-prosecution of Lord Janner, of whether it should have been left up to the jury to decide if they felt Coulson's evidence had been relevant.

Lord Burns' highlighting of the Scottish law on perjury does nonetheless all but suggest that north of the border the oath isn't to be taken literally.  Apparently you only need tell the truth up to a point; juries can distinguish between evidence from a witness that is clearly fanciful while still accepting other things they say as fact, as Burns writes.  It's quite true that if everyone who lied under oath was prosecuted the courts would do little else, and yet it seems perverse that a judge can accept that someone who was in such a position of authority and power as Coulson can treat the oath with contempt and walk free, claiming vindication no less.

What matters however is the law, and regardless of whether or not the case was pursued competently or with total dedication, with perjury being so narrowly defined it was always going to be difficult to achieve a conviction.  The same could be said of many of the prosecutions of Sun journalists in England, which have in the main seen the journalists acquitted while their sources, disgracefully, have often been convicted and imprisoned.  These prosecutions, which are all the more questionable after a Court of Appeal ruling that a judge had misdirected the jury in one trial, resulted from the handing over to the Met of a massive cache of internal documentation, as provided by News Corp's Management Standards Committee.  If the purpose, as critics have long suspected, was to focus attention on the misdeeds of individual journalists rather than on those commissioning their stories and paying their wages, then it seems to have gone entirely according to plan.

Nor does the performance of the CPS inspire confidence should charges eventually be forthcoming over the phone hacking at the Mirror group of newspapers.  Just as News International maintained its "one lone reporter" line until it could no longer do so, such was the weight of evidence, so too Trinity Mirror denied any wrongdoing until finally the logjam was broken by the case brought by a group of celebrities.  Former chief executive Sly Bailey almost certainly lied to the Leveson inquiry, while current CEO Simon Fox, who previously took HMV to the brink of collapse, claimed once they were convinced hacking had taken place they acted.  Mr Justice Mann in fact had to order the company to make clear exactly what it was it was admitting to last September, rather than just in the "general terms" it had.  His ruling also made clear that he accepted the evidence of James Hipwell (one of those imprisoned following the City Slickers affair) on hacking at the Daily Mirror, and how it "implicates the newspaper at levels above the journalists investigating the stories".  Let's hope Alison Saunders and friends have more success with Piers Morgan than her predecessor did with Rebekah Brooks, eh?

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6/03/2015 11:39:00 pm | |

Monday, July 28, 2014 

The class of the News of the World.

Nick Davies' Hack Attack looks to be as essential reading as Flat Earth News was:


Hoare was furious with him one time when Hoare brought in a story about a famous actress only to find that Coulson, first, refused to publish it; second, took the famous actress on holiday; third, was clearly being rewarded in her bed; fourth, and worst of all, told the famous actress how Hoare had managed to get the story in the first place, with the result that the source was exposed and lost forever.

 When Hoare discovered all this, he told Coulson direct and to his face that he was a “complete cunt”. Coulson replied with a line which became a regular catchphrase as he worked his way upwards: “I’ll make itup to you, mate.” As though it didn’t matter what you did, because you could always throw a favour in somebody’s direction and just move on.
...

 There is a story that Coulson’s assistant editor Ian Edmondson often liked to tell, about the time when he was still only a junior reporter on the News of the World and he had a girlfriend who was a reporter on another newspaper. He liked to call her “Boobs”. It so happened, he would explain, that Boobs made friends with Tracy Shaw, a particularly eye-catching young actor from Coronation Street who was of great interest to the tabloids. As Edmondson told it, there was one night when the two women had gone out on the town together and afterwards, Boobs had confided in him that Shaw had done some coke. This was obviously a secret, he would say, and one which could cause trouble for Shaw and potentially for his girlfriend – but also it was obviously a good story for the News of the World. So, he recalled with some relish, he had persuaded the trusting Boobs to tell him the whole tale again, secretly recorded her every word and gave it to the paper.

 ...

But Weatherup was no kind of street fighter. He appeared to be stuck in a 1970s time warp, playing the John Travolta part in Saturday Night Fever. He wore expensive suits and special gloves for driving and he had a well-known tendency, at the first sight of a sunny day, to turn up in the office in tight-fitting white tennis shorts; and an equally well-known tendency to slide up behind the young female reporters and massage their shoulders or even kiss their necks.

 ...

During the spring of 2005, for example, he (Coulson) personally oversaw a project to snatch an interview with the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, where he was serving his time for the murder of 13 women. This was kept very secret.

 The reporter on the job was instructed not to tell colleagues. For maximum discretion, any senior editor could have managed the job, but Coulson liked to think he knew how to run an investigation and he duly authorised the payment of a hefty fee to Sutcliffe’s brother, Carl, and also the purchase of a camera and recorder that were specially designed to trick the metal detectors at Broadmoor. Carl Sutcliffe concealed them inside a plaster cast and visited his unsuspecting brother who then found himself splashed across the News of the World, primarily on the grounds that he had become fat – “a balding 17-stone slob”, as the paper put it.

 ...

Some sources were naive. They would tell their story before getting a signed contract and would simply never be paid. One woman agreed to talk on the promise that the News of the World would pay for her to have a good holiday. When she tried to claim her reward, an editor declared that she was from up north, so she could stay in a caravan, for £150. Some got contracts and fell for an easy trick. The contract promised them big money if the story went on the front page. The reporter knew very well it would go inside the paper but kept that quiet. When the story came out and the source begged for something, anything, the reporter would offer them a tiny fee and, as one put it: “You wear them down and, in the end, they’ll take buttons.” A few – including a woman who had been raped by a footballer – fell foul of a clause which said that to the best of the source’s knowledge, the story must be true: the News of the World printed the story, claimed the source had been knowingly wrong about some part of it and refused to pay up.

 ...

 The paper ruined a long list of more or less famous men by exposing the fact that they had visited prostitutes. And yet, in search of more of these stories, one News of the World reporter was told to make contacts among high-class sex workers with the specific instruction that he should have sex with them, do cocaine with them and claim it all on expenses. So he did.

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7/28/2014 06:01:00 pm | |

Wednesday, June 25, 2014 

The prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

Killers view themselves like they view the world, they pick at the holes.

Nick Davies, as usual, is right.  When it came down to it, the phone hacking trial wasn't about crime conducted on an industrial scale in the offices of a newspaper; it was about power.  Had Rebekah Brooks also been convicted, it wouldn't have just caused David Cameron further embarrassment over all those cosy country suppers, it would have also implicated his two predecessors, both of whom got close to the tabloid editor.  As for Rupert Murdoch, it would have meant the person he installed at the top of his UK operation and treated like a surrogate daughter had broken the law repeatedly, either with or without his knowledge, bringing a potential corporate charge all the nearer.

The relief was palpable also in the quarters of Fleet Street where they've always downplayed just how out of control newspapers for a time were.  Had Brooks been sent down there would have been no denying the moral vacuum that had dominated and still remains in certain newsrooms.  One editor gone bad can be portrayed as a rogue, just as one reporter once was; two would have destroyed any such posturing.  It wouldn't have revived the demands for statute, but it would have shown just how inadequate the reheated PCC in the form of the Independent Press Standards Organisation is.

Instead all got the result they both prayed and paid for.  Brooks' acquittal meant they could focus on her rather than the conviction of the prime minister's chosen one and their former colleague.  To read the leader columns of the Times and Telegraph is to be beamed into a world of make believe, one where the establishment overreacted to a few unfortunate breaches of privacy by a handful of journalists on what was always a downmarket rag.  The orchard was not rotten, says the Torygraph, the trial failed to live up to its billing and there is "some truth" in Charlie Brooks' statement that there was a "witch-hunt" against his wife.  "There has not been a vast criminal conspiracy by the press against the public," it solemnly goes on.

It makes you wonder how the paper's editorial writer would describe the largest player in another major industry found to have broken the law on at least 1,000 separate occasions, with it possible there are up to 5,000 victims of phone hacking in total.  As the BBC summarises, this is far from the end of the saga: 59 people are awaiting trial over corrupt payments, mostly from the Sun, while investigations continue into alleged hacking at the Mirror.  A fact you also won't see bandied about by the apologists is Glenn Mulcaire's files show he was tasked 600 times during Brooks' editorship at the Screws.  Her defence managed to whittle this figure down to just 12 occasions when it was absolutely certain the notes corresponded with a known hack rather just "blagging", and as there was nothing to personally connect any of these hacks with Brooks, the one major question being over the Milly Dowler intercept itself, the jury simply wasn't convinced she had conspired with those she worked alongside.  The idea she didn't have a case to answer however, or that this was a witch-hunt, is absolutely ridiculous.

They can't just focus on Brooks' innocence though, and so the story is already being moved on to the cost.  £100m, as the Telegraph already reported today on its front page, and as the Times does tomorrow.  Some £60m of this is down to the no expense spared approach of News Corp; Brooks' lead QC and his team were pulling in 30k a week, while the lead prosecutor by contrast was on £570 a day.  All that just to convict "one" individual, ignoring those who admitted their guilt at the outset, as though there are some investigations just too costly to bother with, especially when they involve figures at the very heart of the establishment.  Then we have those once again deploying the "no one cares" argument, or this doesn't tell voters anything they didn't already suspect line.  On the latter perhaps not, but voters don't care about the prime minister having to apologise for either being a knave or a tool?  Please.

If there's one specific irony that overwhelms here, it has to be how different sides of the elite while seemingly in conflict are desperately working towards the same goal.  The majority of the press professes to stand up for Mr and Mrs Average in their battle with the out of touch career politicians of Westminster while in actuality caring only for their own interests, namely profit.  Any threat, however small or risible, must be countered with derision, special pleading and hyperbole.  The press statute, regardless of merit, was the biggest threat to freedom of speech since our ancestors first developed language.  Of course they were going to mock and pick as many holes as possible in the "trial of the century", regardless of the outcome.  Those in power meanwhile, still believing they need the fourth estate to get their message across, are anxious to reset everything before the election gets any closer.

Hence all of this was settled by Leveson.  Cameron was cleared.  He was misled, just as Coulson misled everyone.  Do you really want the cretin opposite to be prime minister?  Can't we go back to Murdoch sneaking in the back door of Downing Street now?  There's nothing more to see here folks.

All I preach is extinction.

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6/25/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Tuesday, June 24, 2014 

Emptiness, thy name is Coulson.

When you've been writing about one subject for so long, aren't you meant to feel something when finally, beyond any dispute it's confirmed you were right to do so? Even if it's simply something as petty, as paltry as schadenfreude? I don't know.  I just don't feel anything.

Which is probably the exact same emotion Andy Coulson is currently experiencing.  He must have known this was how it was always likely to end.  You can tell lies for years, you can even tell them on behalf of the government, and if we're to take David Cameron seriously then also to the government, but when you start telling them in the law courts there's always a fair chance they will catch up with you.  Coulson's biggest mistake by far was to imagine he could remain Cameron's chief media adviser once his boss had become PM, believing the phone hacking story had once again gone away.  He then compounded the error by having the hubris to give evidence at Tommy Sheridan's perjury trial, denying under oath he had even so much as heard of Glenn Mulcaire, again without apparently considering for a second how his mendacity could come back to haunt both him and Cameron.

He wasn't to know Nick Davies would discover Mulcaire had been tasked with hacking the phone of Milly Dowler, or that the revelation would shake almost the entire establishment, at least for a short while.  By then Coulson had at last realised the net was closing in; as the Graun is reporting, a week before he resigned he was called by Rebekah Brooks to an urgent breakfast meeting, apparently to be told of incriminating emails about to passed over to the police.  Not that his reason for resigning, coming on the same day as Tony Blair's second appearance before the Chilcot inquiry, offered a hint: he just couldn't give "110%" while "events connected to his old job" continued to receive coverage.  This may well have made him the only person in history to resign twice over something he professed to have never known about.

Coulson did of course know about hacking.  He was up to his neck in it, he authorised it and in the end it consumed the News of the World whole.  While the Crown seems to have characteristically bungled the case against Brooks, failing to convince the jury beyond reasonable doubt that she also conspired to intercept voice messages and pervert the course of justice, the evidence against Coulson was just too overwhelming.  Unlike the other senior figures at the paper who had the sense to plead guilty, realising they couldn't deny the story told by the copious notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire, Coulson gambled on the complexity of the case overwhelming the jury.  The moment it became apparent his ploy had failed was when he had to admit in the witness box to listening to the voicemails intercepted from David Blunkett's phone, the same ones Neville Thurlbeck had pleaded guilty over.  All the previous attempts to present himself as an honest, unfairly traduced operator in a world where grey rather than black or white was the dominating colour were ruined in a matter of minutes.

It was always a fantasy, but it was one sections of the press and the Conservative party did their utmost to continue to maintain.  They ignored the employment tribunal ruling in favour of Matt Driscoll, claimed the Guardian was misleading the British public and only when a murdered schoolgirl was found to have been a victim did the tone very temporarily change.  The Augean stables had to be cleaned out.  Once the Dowler moment had passed, the tact altered to crying press freedom risked being permanently curtailed.  It doesn't matter the only newspaper threatened with being closed down recently has been the, err, Guardian, with most of the right-wing press sagely agreeing how irresponsible it had been over the Snowden files, we simply have to believe the likes of David Woodring when they say there's a climate of fear in Fleet Street post-Leveson.

This is why it's so utterly irrelevant to concern ourselves with whether Cameron should have been more careful in choosing his director of communications, demanding to know if Coulson was telling the full truth when he insisted it was all just one rogue reporter.  Had Cameron given even the shortest, most prematurely concluded fuck about phone hacking or indeed ethics at all he would have steered clear not just of Coulson but tabloid journalists in general.  He didn't because the only thing on his mind was following what he and George Osborne saw as the path to power: get in with the Murdochs and their clingers-on, and everything else will be fine.  Build it and they will come.  The allegations against Coulson were a nuisance, but the fear of Murdoch and his papers was such that it kept Labour quiet.  Besides, they were only celebrities.  Who cares about privacy in this day and age anyway?

Listening to Cameron tell us all how desperately sorry he is that he believed Coulson's lies reminds of Father Jack's apology from a certain priest sitcom.  To give Cameron and the Tories credit, they've always presented his mistake in the best possible light.  After all, who doesn't deserve a second chance?  Coulson had never done anything wrong in the first place mind, but still.  Cameron might have been warned multiple times taking Coulson with him into Downing Street was asking for it; he still did it.  How could he not?  He'd made all these rash promises about abolishing Ofcom, keeping the BBC in check and the rest of it.  Should these things not be as easy as thought thanks to the coalition he needed Andy n' Becks close by lest Keith and James get the wrong idea.  And he might have gotten away with it had it not been for the pesky Graun.  We could quite easily be sitting here now with Sky fully under the yoke of News Corporation, Brooks in charge of a triumphalist News International, the Sun even more scathing about Red Ed and his failings to eat bacon sandwiches while looking vaguely human.

The worst could also be yet to come.  Coulson still faces the perjury charge for his evidence at the Sheridan trial, an appearance it seems Cameron must have been intensely relaxed about.  It's one thing to be such a pleb you take the word of a tabloid editor at face value; it's quite another for them to be in your employ when they tell those fibs to the beak.  Should Coulson be found guilty a second time, can he really just deploy the "I was lied to as well" defence again?

Probably.  Looking at tomorrow morning's front pages, it's difficult to see exactly what's changed since July 2011.  Only the Mail goes for objectivity, while the Times' splash could have been set by Murdoch himself.  In fact it probably was.  For all that's altered, there's much that's still the same.  Almost exactly the same system of regulation.  The same biases.  The same changing of the story.  The same emptiness.  Oh, that last one's just me.

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6/24/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Tuesday, July 24, 2012 

Leveson and the crumbling of empires.

And so it ends, not with a whimper but a bang. In a perfect coincidence, the Crown Prosecution Service announced its decision to charge some of those arrested over alleged phone hacking on the same day as the Leveson inquiry's last public hearings. For those like me who were sceptical of the inquiry to begin with, wondering whether it would be turned into a circus by the celebrity witnesses, something that looked more than plausible when Hugh Grant was the one of the first called to give evidence, it's more than safe to say that we were wrong to be.

If nothing else, it finally provided a platform for those who have held power without responsibility for so long to be held to account. We didn't just have the Murdochs giving evidence under oath (and what evidence), but also Paul Dacre, Richard Desmond, Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and many others from the Street of Shame asked to account for the rubbish they serve up day after day after day in their papers. On occasion it wasn't so much the answers they gave as their mere presence, so many being shy and retiring types when not ordering about their underlings. Dawn Neesom, editor of the Daily Star does exist, it turns out, while Paul "double cunting" Dacre seethed his way through his appearances, unused to having to suffer such indignities.

Not that these were anything to those the first group of witnesses to the inquiry had went through. Again, for those like me who felt that the McCanns had brought some (not all by any means, I must stress) of the subsequent bad coverage on themselves through the way they went about enlisting the media in the search for their missing daughter, we were delivered the equivalent of a hefty slap around the chops. It's easy to forget that the likes of the Express and Star really did carry stories claiming that the McCanns had been swingers and took part in orgies, that they had sold Madeleine to help pay off mortgage debts, or that the News of the World published Kate's personal diary despite the McCann's press adviser telling them not to do so. That it was a bastardised English to Portuguese to English translation didn't put them off one bit; indeed, Colin Myler at one stage rang Gerry after the couple had given the an interview to Hello! magazine, righteously wounded that they had gone somewhere other than the Screws after the paper had helped raise £1.5m for the Madeleine fund. Similar horror stories came from Sienna Miller, Anne Diamond, Charlotte Church, the Dowlers, and Mary-Ellen Field, who lost two jobs thanks to the NotW's obsession with Elle Macpherson.

When it was the turn of the politicians to shed some light on their relationship with the press, it was a case of who knew least: was it the elected leaders of the nation, or our self-appointed representatives? David Cameron, according to the BBC, said a variation on he couldn't remember or recall 49 times during his 25,890 words of evidence, while his old pal Andy Coulson did the same on 28 occasions during just 10,531 words of testimony. Cameron at one point had to call on glam Sam to remember just how often he met with dear Rebekah and Charlie; once every six weeks or so according to his wife's social diary. While Jeremy Hunt might not have been brought down directly through the inquiry, despite it being apparent to everyone other than the compromised leader himself that he had broken the ministerial code, he surely can't survive the coming reshuffle. And despite the continuing outpourings from Rhodri Davies, QC for News International, everyone now knows that there was a shadow policy being conducted through Hunt's SpAd Adam Smith in favour of the BSkyB bid. There may not have been prima facie evidence of a pact between News International and the Conservatives, but we did learn of how Cameron knew three weeks in advance that the Sun was to plump for the Tories over Labour the day after Gordon Brown's 2009 conference speech.

We must then return once again to poor Dave's choice of mates. It was bad enough when Rebekah and Andy were charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice and perjury respectively; for them to now also face trial on the specific charge of conspiring to intercept the voicemail of Milly Dowler is just about as bad as it gets. Let's give Dave the widest benefit of the doubt: that he genuinely did want to give Coulson a second chance, and he took George Osborne's advice to employ him as his chief spin doctor purely because of his ahem, array of skills, rather than his closeness to the key players at News International. Why then, when the evidence was mounting up and the warnings from numerous individuals were coming in thick and fast did he insist on taking Coulson into Downing Street with him? Consider the nightmare scenario, that both Brooks and Coulson are found guilty of all they've been accused of; is there any possible way that Cameron could remain prime minister when his director of communications was not only involved in the hacking of the voicemail of a missing schoolgirl, but also lied under oath about having no knowledge of phone hacking whatsoever?

As Alan Rusbridger told Leveson today, the fundamental reason why phone hacking happened is because News International was allowed to become too powerful. At the height of his hubris Kelvin MacKenzie honestly believed that he had the power to help a party to election victory, if only through the constant slurring and smearing of the opposition. Murdoch himself was far more subtle: he joined the winning team when their victory was inevitable, while still maintaining his influence through the menace of what he could unleash should his chosen side drift too far from his own views. MacKenzie's values were passed down through the subsequent editors of the Sun even if they altered their views as the public's own changed, while the News of the World tried to one up the daily paper, and often succeeded. What MacKenzie started, Rebekah Wade renewed and Andy Coulson then perfected. If it hadn't been for Nick Davies and the support he received from the Graun, not to forget the court cases brought which exposed further evidence, then Rupert Murdoch would almost certainly still be a director of NI and cock of the walk. He might not have been telling the truth when he told the culture committee that his appearance before them was the most humble day of his life, but he has been humbled. It's a much needed reminder that no matter how big, powerful and influential, all empires eventually begin to crumble.

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7/24/2012 07:01:00 pm | |

Thursday, June 14, 2012 

No, he Cam't!

Yo, Blair! Two little words that seemed to express everything that had gone wrong between our last but one prime minister and the US president he had decided to affix himself to. Far from being equals, or even keeping up the pretence where others might hear, here was how the president really addressed his UK counterpart: much like he might his dog. For those who decided this was merely one of Bush's eccentricities, evidence of how you can take the boy out of Texas but not Texas out of the boy, what followed was if anything more humiliating. Offering to go out on a peace tour in an attempt to reach a ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah, he was first rebuffed and then uttered "[B]ecause obviously if she [Condoleezza Rice] goes out, she's got to succeed, if it were, whereas I can go out and just talk." Just talk, not necessarily succeed. Such was Blair's reduced status in 2006.

Six years on, and while the text from Rebekah Brooks to David Cameron sent on the eve of his 2009 conference speech is not quite as succinct, it ought to be just as damning. Having just dumped Labour in the most humiliating fashion possible, here's the former editor of the Sun and newly appointed chief executive of News International saying "professionally, we're in this together", that they should discuss a misunderstanding over a "country supper" and lastly that "yes, he Cam!" give the speech of his life to the Tory conference. Despite no longer being the Sun's editor, the front page of the paper the day after and indeed its leader column used that exact phrase as the headline.

Apart from being toe-curling in the extreme, and away from Rebekah Brooks' transgressing the rules of etiquette (one must never refer to someone as being an Old Etonian, doncha know, hence why glam Sam Cam, daughter of a baronet, always thought Becks was a bit of a prole), it rather explained why Cameron had spent the first few hours of his testimony stressing his emphasis on television news rather than on newspapers. Yes, he explained that politicians of all stripes had gotten far too close to media proprietors and their clingers-on, and the Tories can never remind us enough of Sarah Brown hosting a pyjama party at Chequers that both Brooks and Wendi Deng attended, but you can't quite imagine Gordon Brown exchanging such hideous text messages with Murdoch himself, or indeed Paul Dacre.

Despite this chumminess and talk of professionally "being in this together", there was you must understand absolutely no deal, either overt or covert between the Conservatives and News International. After all, they had only given Andy Coulson gainful employment almost as soon as he had resigned in disgrace for not knowing about his royal editor hacking phones, an appointment that both George Osborne and Cameron admitted they had sought the advice of dear Rebekah on before they made it. No one bothered to independently verify that Coulson was telling the truth when he said he knew nuffink about hacking; why would they? Just as Coulson wasn't hired for his knowledge of politics, although he seemed to be an instinctive Tory, why should they need to worry about past unpleasantness when it was all part of the wooing needed to win back power? It was Coulson, said Cameron, who coined the "hug a hoodie" headline for his speech on understanding and showing more love towards young thugs; that was just the kind of spin doctor he needed.

There was we're informed by multiple sources no smoking gun uncovered during Cameron's evidence, as if there was ever going to be. Dave we're informed went through hours of coaching with lawyers to avoid even the possibility of suggesting that there was something untoward going on; why, he and Sam only met with Brooks and Dave's old mate Charlie every six weeks or so, despite living just down the road from them! Other red herrings also abounded: that Coulson should have received developed vetting is nonsense, and in any case the decision was made by the civil service. Just because every recent director of communications past and since has been developed vetted, including Coulson's deputy, is neither here nor there. Gordon Brown's linking of Conservative policy with support for the BSkyB bid was but an "entirely unjustified and specious conspiracy theory"; just because the Tories promised to freeze the BBC licence fee and abolish Ofcom, one of which they've achieved, and both of which were on James Murdoch's wish list doesn't a plot, understanding or even nods and winks make.

As for Jeremy Hunt, Cameron couldn't remember seeing his memo saying that James Murdoch was furious about Vince Cable holding up the BSkyB bid and that it should be passed through immediately. Anyway, even if he had, then the lawyer on holiday at the time who examined any potential for bias over the phone said that had he known about the memo he still would have said there was no reason why he couldn't act properly in his quasi-judicial role. Which part of he's staying put for now don't you understand?

And besides, no one out there in the real world cares about Leveson. No less a person than Peter Watt, that perpetually wrong contributor to Labour Uncut has said as much. No one gives a toss that the prime minister has had to spend 5 hours looking exceptionally shifty giving evidence under oath at the inquiry he set up, apparently unconcerned at the time that he could be one of the key witnesses. No one thinks that the whole Chipping Norton set stinks, and not just from all the horse shit laying around. Why should anyone spend another second wondering or worrying about collusion at the very top of the establishment between politicians, newspaper editors and police officers? We have to start concentrating on the stuff that really matters to Mr and Mrs Average, and that certainly isn't the old news being served up in front of Lord Brian of Leveson. Privacy? Pah! Deals and skullduggery? Gullyfluff! The prime minister to be and this slightly sinister, slightly strange woman exchanging teeth-achingly sycophantic texts? Nothing to see here. Just forget about it all. It's just froth created by political obsessives and media luvvies who love nothing better than to talk about themselves. That this government's reputation and poll ratings continue to plumb the depths is all about the economy. Nothing more. Really.

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6/14/2012 09:52:00 pm | |

Tuesday, June 12, 2012 

The neurotic returns.

As someone who a couple of weeks ago finally plucked up the courage to read Andrew Rawnsley's The End of the Party, having not really wanted to bring back all those memories of Tony Blair's last few years, it was ever so slightly difficult to take some of Gordon Brown's testimony at Leveson yesterday seriously. Blair did repeatedly renege on apparent deals or understandings that he would step down as Labour leader, leaving the way clear for Brown, which was partially Brown's motivation for his aides briefing against him; it doesn't however explain Brown's malice against anyone who he felt had either wronged him or was advising Blair to get rid of him, who were also mercilessly targeted. When the tables were turned, such as when Alan Milburn penned an article calling for there to be a contest for leadership of the party rather than a Brown coronation, Brown immediately phoned up Blair blaming him for putting Milburn up to it.

One thing that has defined Leveson so far, the apparent amnesia which afflicts so many once they're under oath, didn't affect Brown, as Andrew Neil noted. The difference was that Brown so often seemed to be trying to tell us that white was in fact black, despite many separate independent sources having previously told us the opposite. He went so far as to say that "he was so obsessed by the newspapers that he rarely read them". This after he had spent much of the first hour of his evidence detailing how the Sun had in his last year of office set out to destroy him, and when as Steve Richards said on Newsnight last night, he was notorious for spending the first half hour he was awake while prime minister reading every newspaper, causing his aides to repeatedly remind him that he was quite possibly the only person in the country to browse all the way from the Daily Star to the FT.

The really sad thing is that this fundamental reliance on being economical with the actualite, as Alan Clark put it, only damaged the rest of his at times gripping testimony. Perhaps his refusal to own up to the briefings or to his role in the attempted coup against Blair is down to keeping something for his still to be written memoirs; if it was instead because he feared that would become the story rather than the other things he wanted to say, then he was deeply mistaken. While most of the sketch writers were sympathetic rather than incredulous as the lobby hacks were, Brown in denial was the overarching theme.

This blunted his attacks on both the Sun and the Conservatives. Despite Tom Newton Dunn tweeting the paper's defence from last year of their story on the then four month old Fraser's cystic fibrosis, it barely bothered today to repeat itself. NHS Fife's statement that a member of staff "spoke without authorisation" of his condition all but confirmed Private Eye's report from last year that it was the partner of a doctor that was the source of the Sun's story, which is not quite the same as the Sun's claim that it received it from a "concerned member of the public". The paper also didn't mention Rebekah Brooks's testimony that she absolutely had authorisation from the Browns to run the story, something repeatedly denied by both Gordon and Sarah, suggesting she is now persona non grata in Wapping.

Brown's highlighting of how the paper repeatedly attacked him over Afghanistan, including notoriously over a condolence letter he sent, was met far more harshly, the Sun calling in a favour from former chief of the defence staff General Dannatt to claim that Brown had to be pushed to increase the troop presence in the country, as though that somehow reflects badly on the former prime minister. Most disgraceful of all is Tom Bower, claiming that because the Browns left Downing Street for the final time arm in arm with their two sons that this use of them as "political props" somehow undermines Brown's evidence on the denied authorisation; how then should they have left? Out the back door that Murdoch was asked to enter through, perhaps?

Regardless of whether or not Brown did tell Murdoch that he was declaring war on his company, and it seems an odd thing for Keith to make up and then tell others had happened, his linking of the Conservatives changing their policy in line with that of News International is hardly the conspiracy theory that George Osborne claimed it was. The Tories' defence that if there was some sort of deal they would hardly have put Vince Cable in charge of authorising the BSkyB bid is laughable: they hadn't expected that they would have to form a coalition, and Cable as business secretary was one of Nick Clegg's few red lines. Osborne was effectively given the benefit of doubt in his often curious evidence purely because he is neither Jeremy Hunt, who squirmed his way through his time under oath, nor his David Cameron, due to give evidence on Thursday. The fact that according to Rebekah Brooks Osborne had been "expressed bafflement" at an Ofcom letter on the BSkyB bid during a dinner in December 2010 was explained by Osborne on the basis that on whatever happened it would annoy some of his pals in the media, therefore he didn't really have a view. This nonsense was allowed to pass all but unquestioned.

As was his evidence on how the Tories came to choose Andy Coulson as Cameron's director of communications. It wasn't that he simply worked for News International and had contacts with those working there; as a "national newspaper editor" he had a wealth of experience, broader than Alastair Campbell, who had never been an national editor. This deserved to be gaped at as some of Brown's testimony had been: Campbell had been a political editor at both Today and the Mirror, whereas Coulson had no speciality in politics whatsoever, hence why he was surprised to be approached by the Tories. Osborne's inquiring into his background also seemed to amount to asking Coulson whether there was anything else to come about the phone hacking, to which he said there wasn't, and asking Brooks whether he was a "good person". She presumably didn't tell Osborne about how Glenn Mulcaire had also been hacking her voicemail, although as we know, Coulson has never so much as met Mulcaire.

Murdoch himself was dealt another blow today when John Major, a man who was clearly fair too humble to ever have been prime minister, confirmed that he was all but offered the support of Murdoch's papers in 1997 if he changed his policies on the European Union. It wouldn't have made any difference to the election result if Major had took up the offer, but it rather punctures Keith's claim that he had never asked anything of a politician. It also led nicely on to Ed Miliband's welcome call for quotas in media ownership, effectively saying that Murdoch should have to either sell the Sun or the Times. The longer this drip drip of allegations and calls for change at News Corp goes on, the more Murdoch is going to hold Cameron's setting up of the inquiry against him. And as Nick Clegg's refusal to support Jeremy Hunt shows, it's getting to the point where the Tories need all the help they can get.

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6/12/2012 07:18:00 pm | |

Wednesday, May 30, 2012 

Taxi for Mr Davies.

It was ever so slightly rich for Rhodri Davies, QC for News International at the Leveson inquiry, to rise today and complain about Vince Cable claiming that the Liberal Democrats had faced "veiled threats" over his role in charge of the BSkyB bid. News Corporation has after all admitted that the News of the World placed both Charlotte Harris and Mark Lewis under surveillance in the hope of finding some dirt on the two lawyers representing phone hacking victims, while those on the media select committee found themselves facing similar tactics. Then there's Ed Miliband, who was also effectively told that as he had "made it personal about Rebekah", he'd have it made personal about him. There's more than enough evidence that News International felt they could threaten politicians and anyone who stood in their way with impunity, so why wouldn't they do the same to a party that looked to be threatening "Project Rubicon"? Answer came there none.

P.S. Without prejudging anything, this blog suggested at the time that Andy Coulson might subsequently be visited by Inspector McKnacker over his evidence at Tommy Sheridan's libel trial. My conclusion to the piece hasn't stood up quite as well, though:

Happily this also means that the first investigation by the Met, which limited itself to just the phone hacking carried out by Clive Goodman and Mulcaire has been completely vindicated. Everything is once again right with the world, and the Met and News International can continue to have a fruitful and reciprocal friendship. Who could possibly object to that?


Oh dear.

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5/30/2012 07:08:00 pm | |

Friday, May 11, 2012 

A liar or an idiot.

Apart from the new email showing further proof of the closeness between Jeremy Hunt and Fred Michel, the most crucial piece of evidence given by Rebekah Brooks today at the Leveson inquiry was that she didn't believe her publishing of the details of sex offenders in the News of the World in the aftermath of the kidnap and murder of Sarah Payne would lead to reprisals. There are only two conclusions you can draw from such apparent insouciance: either Brooks is a liar, or she's an idiot. Her entire campaign was designed to force politicians to do something, and she and her staff knew that the precise way to do that was to get into the public domain information that would almost certainly lead, if not to vigilante action, than at the very least abuse and protests against those named. She perhaps didn't anticipate a paediatrician being targeted by mistake, but she absolutely knew what she was doing.

It's through this prism that you have to view the rest of her evidence, which was mostly mind-numbing in the extreme. Despite the fact she has been close to the last three prime ministers, we're meant to believe that this was all down to sheer friendliness on her part. Yes, obviously they thought they could get something by almost drawing her into their inner circle, but never once did she compromise her position as a journalist and never once did they compromise their position as a politician through their relationship.

Thankfully, Robert Jay was on far better form today than he was against the stonewalling Andy Coulson yesterday. He also seemed far better briefed. Brooks had to deny, unconvincingly, that she had variously demanded that Downing Street order a reopening of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, else Theresa May would be appearing on the front page of the Sun every day until they did; that she did not, as widely reported, tell Andy Coulson that the Sun would not support the Conservatives until Dominic Grieve was moved from his job as shadow home secretary, having had the temerity to say to Brooks's face the Sun's coverage of crime and the Human Rights Act was hysterical; and that she did not in a phone call to Ed Balls demand the sacking of Sharon Shoesmith following the Baby Peter case, else they would "turn this thing on him".

Funny, isn't it, that there all these stories, all apparently untrue, about Brooks using her power and influence to demand things of politicians and yet she didn't believe there was anything inappropriate about the level of contact between the then editor of the biggest selling newspaper in the country and those making the law. She also didn't believe that politicians were trying to get to Rupert through contact with her, which is just about as obtuse as her evidence got. It was fascinating to learn though that David Cameron spoke to her repeatedly about the phone hacking accusations against the Screws, and yet he apparently never spoke to Andy Coulson about it. Very strange.

In spite then of how apparently little they discussed the BSkyB bid, which Brooks knew of two months before it was announced (it just so happens that it was almost in line with the Tories coming to power), it was mostly just Tories who commiserated with her when she was forced into resigning. It was done indirectly, naturally, and some of the reported words are not exact, but it is true that Cameron more or less said that he was sorry he couldn't show her the same loyalty she had shown him, as Ed Miliband had him on the run. He needn't have been concerned. Brooks today was loyalty personified. One suspects however that it won't save her from a short stretch in either Styal or Holloway.

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5/11/2012 04:19:00 pm | |

Thursday, May 10, 2012 

The eternal darkness of Coulson's spotless mind.

If, like me, you've seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and thought that the possibility of having certain memories wiped from your brain isn't necessarily a bad thing, then it seems that at long last a treatment has been developed that can achieve exactly that. It's called the Leveson inquiry.

Difficult as it is to believe, considering we've now had evidence from both James and Rupert Murdoch, neither of whom could remember almost anything controversial that has happened to them, the latest sufferer of amnesia to testify seems to have the most serious case. Andy Coulson could barely remember his name, let alone almost anything else that's happened to him over the past decade.

Here's an incomplete list of the things he couldn't recall: the conversations he had with Rupert Murdoch about the news content while editor of the News of the World; any conversation with KRM about the paper's endorsement at the 2005 election; any mention of his previous employment when George Osborne enquired whether he'd be interested in becoming the Tories' chief spin doctor; any shadow cabinet minister other than David Cameron asking about phone hacking; whether News Corp's lobbyist, Fred Michel, attended a lunch with Cameron and the then Spanish prime minister; whether Cameron sought further assurances from him after the Guardian's phone hacking revelations in 2009; any specific conversation about the News of the World's endorsement of the Tories in 2010; when he knew that the Sun was going to endorse the Tories in 2009; or having any conversation with Fred Michel, Rebekah Brooks, Jeremy Hunt or any other politician about the BSkyB takeover bid.

It was all unflinchingly loyal, and it was also absolutely infuriating. At times Coulson bordered on being incredulous at Robert Jay's questioning; did he really have to spell out why the Tories wanted him to deal with the media? His body language said exactly what he refused to, that it was breathtakingly obvious. As Michael Wolff writes, Coulson was the key conduit between News International and the Conservatives, and he alongside Rebekah Brooks was chiefly responsible for convincing Murdochs junior and senior that Cameron was a surer bet than Labour. It didn't matter that he didn't have a background in politics, as that was secondary. This is exactly why Cameron couldn't have cared less whether Coulson knew about hacking at the Screws, and why he apparently didn't enquire further regardless of all the warnings he was given. As long as he delivered in terms of the reason he was hired, and wasn't catastrophic at dealing with the rest of the media, he'd be just fine.

It was only once in office that the problems really started, as the whole phone hacking caper simply wouldn't go away. Coulson didn't go through developed vetting for obvious reasons, even though all his predecessors and indeed his successors have: they knew he wouldn't have passed. That he thinks he may well have seen top secret material and also sat in on national security meetings just shows the contempt Cameron felt for all the criticism he came in for over his hugging close of Coulson. He felt, just as Blair and Brown did when they sent commiserations to Coulson over his resignation from the Screws, that this phone hacking business was just part of the greater game. No one got hurt, apart from a few celebrities, and who cared about them?

Cameron's continuing loyalty was reciprocated in full. Coulson was "disappointed" with the Sun's coming out in favour of the Tories, as it was more about Labour losing their support than the Tories gaining it. That the paper did it on the day of Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour conference for maximum effect went unmentioned. Indeed, on the whole he felt that the Sun's coverage wasn't obsequious enough, apparently forgetting that on election morning the Sun splashed with a take on the Obama hope poster, claiming Cameron was the country's "only hope". Attempting to make further mischief, Coulson also claimed that a Guardian executive told him "not to write off" the possibility the paper could endorse the Tories, something Alan Rusbridger responded to by tweeting, Coulson fashion, that no one at Kings Road could recall such a conversation.

Remarkably, when he could remember certain details, he often seemed to be mistaken. Coulson complains bitterly in his witness statement (PDF) that following the Matt Driscoll tribunal ruling "it prompted a torrent of publicity in which I was repeatedly branded a bully". Considering that at the time only the Guardian, Independent and Private Eye so much as mentioned the finding of the tribunal, this is just ever so slightly hyperbolic. Likewise, he thought his answer to why there couldn't possibly have been a secret deal between News International and the Conservatives over the BSkyB bid was compelling: why did Vince Cable become business secretary with jurisdiction over approving it when someone else could have been put in place? The obvious answer is that it was part of the deal when the coalition was formed. In any case, if Cable had to be removed from his role over his apparent bias, why wasn't the same process followed over Jeremy Hunt, who had previously said he wanted to act as a cheerleader for the Murdochs? And why is Hunt now still being defended to the hilt when the case against him is far more compelling that it ever was against Cable?

Coulson's evidence was summed up when he said that he was "too busy" to divest himself of the shares he received in News Corporation as part of his severance package. He was working far too hard to be bothered to ensure there was no possible conflict of interest in his role, apparently immersing himself fully in the detail of his job, and yet now he can barely recall much of what was he was doing. He was the very definition of an unreliable witness, but it was precisely this approach that will have delighted Downing Street. How Cameron must be hoping that Rebekah Brooks takes a similar tact tomorrow.

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5/10/2012 09:21:00 pm | |

Monday, January 23, 2012 

Insouciance.

Not only then did the News of the World hack Milly Dowler's phone (and claim, laughably, that they had acquired both her phone number and her voicemail PIN from her school friends), they also attempted to check out their cock and bull story about Milly working for an recruitment agency by calling them and pretending to be her mother.

The report from Surrey police also debunks any notion that the NotW obtained the voicemails from the police, as both Tom Crone and Neville Thurlbeck have suggested might have been the case. More than anything, it's the insouciance of the Screws' dealings with the police when putting their fantastical story to them, and how completely unconcerned they were that the police might find it ever so slightly strange that they'd gained access to a missing person's voicemail that most amazes. As it was, they had nothing to fear. At least, until 9 years had passed.

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1/23/2012 05:06:00 pm | |

Thursday, January 19, 2012 

"In a year's time every single one of you in this room might come up and say 'I see what she saw now.'"

We are then finally getting an indication of just what Rebekah Brooks meant when she said that there were worse phone hacking revelations to come and that only then would the News of the World staff understand why the Murdochs had made the decision to close the paper. Ignore as best you can the famous names on the list of those who had their cases settled today, although it's worth remembering that both the police and News International specifically said at one point that John Prescott had not had his phone hacked, and instead focus on those who only entered the limelight as either witnesses to or victims of crime: Paul Dadge, who was photographed helping a woman injured in the 7/7 bombings; Shaun Russell, whose wife and daughter were murdered; and Sara Payne, the woman whose cause the NotW supported to the hilt.

The real question is just why the paper was targeting these people in the first place. The only plausible reason I can come up with for why they were hacking Payne is that it was part of the rivalry which existed for a time between Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, with Payne contributing to the Sun as well as the Screws. Why else would they feel the need to listen in to her dealings, unless perhaps they thought they might get a further insight into any meetings she had with politicians?

Almost as baffling is why they felt the need to hack Paul Dadge's voicemails: in his interview with the BBC a year after 7/7 he mentions how he'd been offered up to £25,000 for a "reunion" with the woman he helped, Davinia Turrell, and that even then he thought some of the hacks "were being really shady", although he couldn't have imagined then quite how shady. Who knows whether they were interested either in the meetings he did have afterwards with Turrell, or the other feel good story of his meeting up with a childhood sweetheart as a result of her seeing the photographs of him, but either way he was another totally ordinary person caught in an extraordinary moment who paid the price with his privacy.

The same is the case with Shaun Russell, husband and father of the murdered Lin and Megan. At least with Milly Dowler there is a very arguable case that if somehow listening to the messages left on her voicemail had led to her killer being found sooner there would then have been a public interest defence; hacking the phone though of someone who guarded the privacy of his remaining daughter tenaciously is simply vile. You could perhaps understand it slightly more if it had been Josie's phone they had targeted, as she has given a couple of interviews since turning 18, mainly you suspect simply to stop any hassle from the press before it begins, but not her father's.

Easier to fathom is the accessing of Harold Shipman's son Christopher's email account, the first case of Glenn Mulcaire going beyond simple phone hacking to be settled. There was cynicism at the time that Shipman had killed himself before reaching 60 so that his wife could receive a pension, having apparently told a prison officer that he was considering doing so, and the fishing expedition led by the Screws seems to have been related to that. A double page spread on the luxury life the wife of the worst serial killer in British history was leading on taxpayer's money would have been classic Screws, as would any additional details on his suicide that they could possibly find through going through his son's inbox. Whether or not it resulted in a story, it did lead to Derek Webb, bless him, putting some of those involved under surveillance. Such was the wonderful place the News of the World was under Andy Coulson.

Also crucial today was that though mealy-mouthed, News International essentially admitted that its senior employees and executives had known about and attempted to cover up the scale of phone hacking at the Screws. Their statement says although they did not accept that they had known, they were paying out damages as if they had. The next step surely must be to acknowledge, finally, just how far the conspiracy went. Further to that is the order by Mr Justice Vos for a further 9 computers to be handed over in case they contain evidence of a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence by those very employees and executives who are still trying to weasel their way out of culpability. And this might only be the tip of iceberg, as none other than Neville Thurlbeck has blogged:

Much more evidence against News International will come in the future.

I worked there from 1988 onwards and I am aware of executives who witnessed practices which would send the share price crashing through the floor.

I expect much of this to come out in industrial tribunals and High Court actions by former members of staff.

But it is the irrevocable loss of trust which could sink it.

Not quite. It'll be the cover up, as it always is.

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1/19/2012 09:39:00 pm | |

Thursday, November 10, 2011 

Deceitful and incompetent.

New router has arrived, but now it looks like something's gone wrong with the line as well as it's failing to sync up. Definitely not the router, as it connected straight away when I tried it here. This incredibly happy turn of events means you'll most likely miss my own analysis of James Murdoch's performance before the select committee, which I'm sure you were all desperately looking forward to. Here instead then is Roy Greenslade, summing it up rather well:

Let's imagine that James Murdoch spoke the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to the Commons select committee. I know it's a stretch, but stay with me.

...

One day in 2008, 10 June to be exact, Myler and Crone arrived in Murdoch's office to obtain authorisation for a large payment - a very large, six figure payment - to settle the Taylor action.

Murdoch was not shown any documents. He was not told about the contents of a damning legal opinion by Silverleaf. He was not informed about Myler's and Crone's contacts with Pike.

Not only that. He didn't ask. It didn't occur to him question why the settlement was necessary, nor to ask why Taylor's phone had been hacked. It also never struck him to wonder why his senior executives were still maintaining the public stance that hacking had been confined to a "rogue reporter".

He was shown a heavily redacted email - the famous "For Neville" email - but nothing more.

The only discussion was about the level of damages and costs that the company should pay. The meeting then concluded after 15 minutes. Job done.

...

That was, of course, an illegal act (ie, a crime). That admission may well come back to haunt him.

Finally, though the headlines may well be devoted to Tom Watson's jibe about Murdoch acting like a Mafia boss (early examples here and here and here) it paled beside the Asda moment raised by Philip Davies.

After explaining that he used to work for the supermarket chain (owned by the giant US company, Walmart) Davies registered his incredulity that Murdoch could have authorised the payment of more than £500,000 (to Taylor) without inquiring deeply into the reasons.

"It all seems so cavalier to me," said Davies. "You agree to settle cases with no real cap but a ballpark figure. You agree that a company should have a legal opinion, but you don't even ask to see the opinion when it is written."

And there, in a couple of sentences, is surely the puncturing of the Murdoch defence. What kind of company boss is that fails to show any curiosity about a massive payment in controversial circumstances? A deceitful one or an incompetent one?


I see no reason why it can't be both.

Update: To tempt fate, it looks as though I'm back online (at gone midnight). To add one point, it seems churlish to begrudge Tom Watson making his mafia comparison. While it's never wise to believe everything the inestimable Louise Mensch says, if it is indeed true that every single member of the media select committee was at one point under surveillance authorised by News International, then that's exactly the sort of behaviour you would expect from an organisation which felt it was accountable to no one, let alone to a bunch of jumped up parliamentarians. Like many organised crime groups, it had also seemingly bought off the police, with certain individuals even going from one to the other. Being compared to an Asda manager might be more demeaning, but few Asda managers end up getting arrested over their business practices.

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11/10/2011 04:06:00 pm | |

Wednesday, November 02, 2011 

Anyone for The Murdochs?

If at times it's seemed as though the News of the World was going through the Kubler-Ross model of dealing with grief when responding to the allegations of phone-hacking, it's perhaps not surprising that we now learn the Murdoch clan last year discussed the "succession" at News Corporation with a family therapist. It's more than a little fitting that those whom pay the bills for the Simpsons (albeit grudgingly) are themselves such a dysfunctional family. There's Daddy himself, the crotchety patriarch with the trophy wife on his arm, the former heir apparent James, with the tattoos and inculcated swaggering arrogance, and Liz, furious at James for having "fucked" her father's company by not getting a grip on a little local difficulty. Should News Corp disintegrate into the dust once Keith does pop his clogs, they could do worse than invite the cameras in to film a reality TV show that would make the Osbournes seem like the Brady Bunch.

Unfortunately for junior it looks at though things are going to get worse. Next week he has to appear again before the parliamentary culture, media and sport committee, where he'll be asked to account for the discrepancy between the account he gave alongside his father and that of Colin Myler and Tom Crone, former editor and legal affairs manager on the Screws respectively. Murdoch maintains he hadn't seen the crucial "for Neville" email, the key piece of evidence which proved knowledge of phone hacking went beyond Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire at the paper, while Myler and Crone both say that he did.

Their version of events seems to be backed up by the latest cache of documents released to the committee, this time from those fine people at Farrer & Co, the same band of lawyers who back in the ethers of time injuncted my good self for daring to republish some in the public domain photographs of Mazher Mahmood. Julian Pike at the firm was called in to advise on the unpleasant matter of the voicemail hacking of Gordon Taylor, head of the PFA. Taylor had through court order obtained the documentation seized by the police from Glenn Mulcaire, documentation that showed journalists other than Clive Goodman had been involved in his case. As Crone outlines in a memo to Myler, this evidence was fatal to any chance of fighting the claim for compensation from Taylor. It also would explode the lie that phone hacking was the work of one rogue reporter and his gopher. Crone was immediately offering, through Farrers, a £150,000 settlement to Taylor.

The documents then, as well as dealing simply with Taylor, also show how the cover up was put in place. The next email from Crone to Pike shows that contrary to the evidence subsequently given by Crone to the committee back in 2009, Neville Thurlbeck did remember seeing the transcripts written up for him by Ross Hindley (also known as Ross Hall), although he was only going "to do the showdown and write up". Next is an illegible page of notes by Pike, which thankfully someone managed to decipher, of his conversation with Myler about his meeting with Murdoch. He apparently recommended waiting for the QC's view before deciding on a settlement. It therefore seems extraordinary that Myler or someone else hadn't informed Murdoch of the "for Neville" email, seeing as it was the clichéd smoking gun than meant they were going to have to pay out at the very least £150,000 of Pa's money to some nobody.

Also wholly lacking is any back-up for Crone's other claim in 2009 that it was Taylor who first asked for a confidentiality clause. Indeed, it seems it was the NotW that originally brought one up, at the same time as offering £300,000 in damages. If Taylor signed up to an agreement, then some more could possibly be found. Mark Lewis, Taylor's solicitor, intimated that his client would definitely button it for a million, plus his own costs, at a cool £200,000. Taylor either wanted to "be vindicated or made rich".

As it's turned out, he's been both. Whoever Nick Davies' source for his 2009 report was, it started in motion the next series of investigations and follow-ups, along with News International's increasingly hysterical denials, followed eventually by acceptance. Michael Silverleaf, "the silk" asked for his advice on how to proceed summed up the position NI faced as only a brief can:

In the light of these facts there is a powerful case that there is (or was) a culture of illegal information access used at NGN in order to produce stories for publication. Not only does this mean that NGN is virtually certain to be held liable to Mr Taylor, to have this paraded at public trial would, I imagine, be extremely damaging to NGN's public reputation.

Not as damaging however as the cover up turned out to be.

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11/02/2011 09:54:00 pm | |

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