After the News of the World phone-hacking scandal climaxed at the Old Bailey in January 2007, two scapegoats – Screws reporter, Clive Goodman and Private Investigator, Glenn Muclaire – were sacrificed to save the reputations of their bosses  – Andy Coulson, (editor), Stuart Kuttner, (managing editor) and Les Hinton (Chairman of News International).
       For the next two years a 3-cornered defensive barrier, composed of News International, The Metropolitan Police Service and the Press Complaints Commission, stood firm around these other culprits. 

But in 2009 one of Mulcaire’s admitted victims, Gordon Taylor, sued the paper for invasion of privacy, and they settled – very privately – for a sum at least ten times greater than would have been awarded by a High Court judge. The disclosures that Taylor’s solicitor sought, if they had proceeded to trial, would have been not only embarrassing for senior management at News International, but positively incriminating for those who have always claimed to have had no knowledge of what Goodman and Mulcaire had been up to. This settlement was very thoroughly and properly uncovered by the Guardian’s Nick Davies, and (no coincidence) the day before the story appeared (July 9^th 2009), it was announced that Stuart Kuttner had been sacked, as he later admitted to the Culture, Media & Sport Committee.
       Since then, the barricades protecting the Screws men – Kuttner, Coulson and Hinton – have slowly been crumbling, and those who predict the imminent sinking of this once inviolable Titanic (and don’t want to be held to account) are beginning to let it be known that they have tales to tell of the systematic, endemic use of voicemail-hacking by Screws staff.
       Kuttner, wily old workhorse that he was, is completely dispensable although he’d been in the job at the Screws for 20 years; no doubt he’s still getting enough from them to keep up the subs at an Essex golf club or wherever he seeks his recreation.

But the other two are in more sensitive places.
Les Hinton is overall boss at the Wall Street Journal, jewel in the crown of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. That he should, quite recently have been involved in the smutty, illicit dealings of a dirty little rag back in England must really rattle Rupert, and thrill the New York Times.

Andy Coulson is the Prime Minister’s chief spinner. (He should have been dropped a long time ago, after he was seen on national TV stonewalling the members of the CMS Committee, making a laughing stock of himself with absurd, impossible denials.)

Recently the police, who had previously been obstructive to anyone seeking information about those who were targeted – and hacked – by Mulcaire, have been more forthcoming. Perhaps Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who was pretty guarded in his evidence to Parliament, now doesn’t want to be seen to be part of whatever arrangements existed between the former head of the investigation, Andy Hayman and the Screws (who now employ Hayman from time to time).

There is a long history of co-operation between the Screws and the Police, both the Met and the City of London forces. “Investigations Editor” Mazher Mahmood has called in their help on several occasions when setting up arrests in bogus criminal scenarios he has created exclusively for the front page of his newspaper, with arrests being timed for late Saturday, so as to preclude any rival Sunday papers from getting a line on them in time for the next day.

With several lawyers – some acting for multiple claimants – moving in, it’s a matter of time before one of the many lurking icebergs prevails, and truth starts pouring in to sink the old hulk.

Meanwhile, Gordon Taylor’s solicitor, Mark Lewis, who extracted over £700k in settlement from the Screws for his clients, is obliged to sue the Metropolitan Police Service, the Press Complaints Commission and their hopeless chairperson, Baroness Peta Buscombe for damages after they publicly stated that he had lied to the CMS Committee.
That he would have had nothing to gain in doing so, and the other parties had a great deal to lose if he was right, suggests that he has a solid case.
More follows.

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