Peter Burden » Privacy

Coulson in the Dock

Peter — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:37:54 +0000

The politicising of the Coulson scandal is inevitable, but it doesn’t help anyone. It would do a lot for the rehabilitation of politics for the voters to see a few Tories break ranks and acknowledge that, despite the short-cut to the heart of Murdochia that he provides, Andy Coulson’s appointment as Communications Chief was a disastrous error of judgement. And the refusal to remove him is now undermining the Government and the Coalition.

One can understand Mr Cameron’s reluctance to give up having Rebekah Brooks’ old mate in the office next door, but the damage this is doing to the credibility and goodwill which the country is generally prepared to show the new PM must far outweigh the benefits of that proximity.

Naively, in a discussion on BBC Radio Wales yesterday, I suggested that there were Tories who would be delighted to see the back of Couson; I cited John Whittingdale, Tory chairman of the Culture Media Sport Committee, for having been vigorous in his pursuit of truth from the News of the World. When the paper’s management Andy Coulson, Stuart Kuttner (managing editor) and Tom Crone (legal boss) appeared in front of his committee last year they lied so blatantly in their claims that they remembered nothing that committee members and watching journalists were laughing.

Coulson had been asked point blank by Welsh committee member, Adam Price how The News of the World had been able to run a story (by as yet uncharged Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck) entirely based on a message left on Prince Harry’s voicemail by his brother William, which could have been obtained by no other means than illegal voice-mail hacking, without the editor questioning its provenance and the way it was acquired.

The story was prominent – the whole of page 7 – with a front page “exclusive” banner trail. The crassness of running a story so obviously acquired in this way is mind-boggling, but not as utterly incredible as Coulson’s reply that, as editor at the time, he knew absolutely nothing about it and had no memory of the story. Any reasonable jury would have deemed this evidence enough of Coulson’s complicity with his reporters’ illegal news-gathering. The footage from the committee proceedings was shown to an incredulous nation on Channel 4 news that evening.

The committee even concluded in their report last February that they had encountered a stone-wall of “collective amnesia”. But yesterday, not half an hour after I’d been commending the independent and objective stance of his chairmanship, John Whittingdale was on BBC’s World at One saying that his committee had to accept Coulson’s denial as they had no other evidence, and that there was no further case to answer.

ANOTHER PAY-OUT AND MORE SHAME FOR RUPERT.

Peter — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:12:38 +0000

The News of the World have been ordered to pay out yet again for their sleazy journalism.
    As I predicted on this blog back in January, the High Court in London has today awarded Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie a settlement (undisclosed but likely to be huge) for the paper’s illegal intrusion of their privacy. The Screws had bought some dodgy information, and (as is their practice) drawn the conclusion that suited their permanently warped sense of news. The wrong conclusion, naturally.
   Ol’ Rupert Rumplechops must be getting mightily pissed off with his former love, The Harridan of Wapping, especially as the finishing touches are put to a fresh major revelation about the mess his people made there three years ago when they clumsily tried to cover up their involvement in a string of phone-hacking crimes.
    And the boss in London then, Les Hinton, is now boss of Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal. That will be more than a bit embarrassing.

Mark Lewis, solicitor, sues Baroness Peta “Betty Buxom” Buscombe (+ the PCC and the Met)

Peter — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 17:12:48 +0000

After quite a search last year, Baroness Betty Buxom turned out to be the only individual desperate enough to take on the chairmanship of the tainted Press Complaints Commission, from erratic wind & waffle wallah, Sir Christopher Meyer. She has done little since to dispel the sense of toothless futility which prevailed under her predecessor.
In one of her first big public pronouncements, to the Society of Editors Annual Conference last November, she told them that in the light of new evidence recently presented to the Commons Culture Media & Sport Committee, the PCC had re-examined the facts relating to the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. They had concluded, she said, that none of this evidence altered their previous conclusion – that Clive Goodman (Royal editor, jailed for his admitted phone-hacking) was a one-off, a rogue reporter and that only he, of all the other hacks on the Screws, had used this illegal method to invade privacy and acquire stories.
Nick Davies of the Guardian (who unearthed fresh evidence last year) had presented irrefutable evidence that the Screws’ senior Shag’n’Brag reporter, Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck had been using Mulcaire’s phone hacking services.
On 2 September 2009 Mark Lewis, the solicitor acting for Gordon Taylor whose extraction of some £700,000 in damages from the paper had sparked the story, was questioned by the committee. He told them that whilst conducting Mr Taylor’s claim he had attended court in order to make an application for the disclosure of documents from the police. Outside court he had spoken to DS Mark Maberly.
Lewis told the committee, “DS Mark Maberly said to me: “You are not having everything but we will give you enough on Taylor to hang them.” Those were his words: “to hang them”. . . He also mentioned the number of people whose phones had been hacked. Whether that was an aside . . . but they said that there was evidence about, or they had found there were something like 6,000 people who were involved. It was not clear to me whether that was 6,000 phones which had been hacked or 6,000 people including the people who had left messages.”
This evidence and the blatantly mendacious delivery of Screws management when trying to explain away these inconvenient facts, left no one in doubt that phone-hacking had been systemic within the paper across a wide range of reporters, and that it was very unlikely that any members of the management would not have known of the practice.
In her statement to the editors, however, Baroness Buxom claimed new further contrary evidence had come to light.
“Those of you who are familiar with the case will recall the significance that was attached to the apparent evidence of a then Detective Sergeant from the Metropolitan Police called Mark Maberly. It was he who was alleged to have said that around 6,000 people had had their phone messages hacked or intercepted.
The allegation was made in oral evidence to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, and has also been published in the press. It was repeated just last Monday in some coverage questioning our report.
Since the publication of our report last Monday, the PCC has heard from Detective Inspector (as he now is) Maberly through lawyers for the Metropolitan Police.
This letter says that Mr Maberly has in fact been wrongly quoted on the 6,000 figure. The reliable evidence, we were told in an e-mail confirming the contents of the letter, is that given by Assistant Commissioner John Yates to the Select Committee, who referred to only a “handful” of people being potential victims.
In light of this, I am doing two things.
First, I am of course putting this new evidence to my colleagues in the Press Complaints Commission, because they will want to update our report to take account of this development.
Second, I have just spoken to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, John Whittingdale, to draw this to his attention. Any suggestion that a Parliamentary Inquiry has been misled is of course an extremely serious matter.”

When Guardian reporter Chris Tryhorn asked whether the letter from the police “had effectively withdrawn Maberly’s evidence”, she replied:
“Maberly has been wrongly quoted in saying that 6,000 people were involved. He didn’t say it. He is said to have said it.”

This claim by the baroness was widely reported and, not surprisingly, Mark Lewis was incensed. He’d nothing to gain by appearing before the Culture Media & Sport Committee, other than the satisfaction of doing a public service, and now he had been widely branded a liar. He has now issued a claim against the Baroness, the PCC and the MPS for damages inrespect of a clear libel.
The PCC, in response to a critical reference in the Committee’s report last February, decided to backtrack from this clearly articulated position by issuing a statement in April in which they attempt to eat the Baroness’s words…..
“Baroness Buscombe has never suggested – and does not believe – that Mr Lewis misled the Select Committee and her statement, which made no reference to Mr Lewis, was not intended as a criticism of him or the evidence which he gave to the Select Committee. Baroness Buscombe regrets that her statement may have been misunderstood and that this has been of concern to Mr Lewis. Baroness Buscombe and the Commission therefore wish to make the position entirely clear.”
Oh dear. That’s very clear – she said it, but then she didn’t say it.
I think Mark Lewis may succeed in his suit.

RUPERT RATTLED BY HINTON INDISCRETIONS.

Peter — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:32:01 +0000

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.

WILL ANDY ALLOW THE TORIES TO DEFY MURDOCH?

Peter — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:39:21 +0000

Would a new Tory government defy the wishes of the Murdochs and press ahead with introducing custodial sentences for convictions under the Data Protection Act?
In early 2008, when the Labour government was about to enact a new Criminal Justice and Immigration bill, they were heavily leaned on by newspaper bosses, principally News International, to strike out Clause 77, which made persons found guilty of offences under the 1998 DPA liable to a term of imprisonment. The papers claimed that this would unreasonably restrain their journalists (despite the important provision of a public interest defence for bona fide investigative journalists).
Mr Brown, whom the Sun newspaper still purported to support at the time, caved in quickly and the clause, while not entirely removed from the bill, was relegated to the status of a mere order-making power, which simply gives the Justice Secretary the power ask Parliament (and other interested parties) at some later date if they wanted it activated.
Since the Sun declared last September for the other side (for all the help that may be), Mr Brown’s Justice Department announced the following month that it was launching a consultation paper with a view to reporting its conclusions on January 31st, and, if positive, putting the new DPA custodial penalties in place in April – this month. The results of the consultation have not been published and there is no sign that this important deterrent to data theft, especially by tabloid journalists seeking private details of celebrities’ lives, will ever be put on the statute book. In any case, in a month’s time there may be a Conservative Justice Secretary in place.
How easy would it be for him to pick up where Jack Straw left off and ignore the wishes of the Conservatives’ friends in Fleet Street?
The Shadow Justice Secretary since January 2009 has been Dominic Grieve. His relationship with News International is unclear. A rumour surfaced in the Observer last year that News International boss, Rebekah Brooks told her old chum and the Tories’ Director of Communications, Andy Coulson that they wouldn’t support the Tories unless Grieve was replaced as Home Secretary. “There is little doubt that the Sun’s support will give Murdoch leverage over a Conservative government, and that power is already being used,” the Observer added. This is a fuzzy story, since Grieve left the Shadow Home Office job in January ’09 when he became Shadow Justice Secretary, and Rebekah Brooks wasn’t elevated to her job as CEO of News International until September ’09 – unless, of course, Rebekah and the Tories had been pow-wowing for over 9 months before the deal was done.
However, there is clearly some lack of harmony between NI and the potential new Justice Secretary. In response to my enquiry as to whether, if he is the New Justice Secretary after May 6^th, he would continue the consultation process over Clause 77 or abandon it, he said: “We agree with the Information Commissioner that custodial penalties should be available for deliberate or reckless misuse of personal data. The law provides the possibility of a defence for responsible journalism undertaken in the public interest and the Information Commissioner has advised that this defence should be made available.”
It looks as though under a new Tory government, there is at least one piece of the News International agenda that won’t be adhered to, if Grieve is given the Justice Department – in spite of the Murdoch’s wishes.

Screws raiding the Bins again.

Peter — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:00:12 +0000

The News of the Screws, in their campaign to insert former editor, Andy Coulson into the press office at Downing Street, last Sunday ran page after page of noisy headlines and knocking copy on Mr Brown and Nick ‘Wunderkind’ Clegg. They put the boot into leading LibDem, St Vince Cable, too, the only MP to predict the crash of ’08.
No expense was spared in their search for documents that might damage him. They’d gathered a pile of detail about Vince’s bills from power, water and phone service providers. In a fatuous attempt to show Cable’s incompetence, they listed details of late payment charges and final demands for bills which had all been paid.
They suggest that all this information is visible in his parliamentary expenses claims, but it isn’t. They must have acquired it by some other underhand means, using, perhaps, old fashioned binologists – investigators who rummage through dustbins for discarded letters; or blaggers who get the information directly from the companies’ own data records, which is a crime that may soon be punishable by a custodial sentence.

MAX SETTLES FOR MURDOCH’S MILLION.

Peter — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:21:09 +0000

Max Clifford has accepted £1m in what is described not as compensation for invasion of privacy (which is what it is) but as “costs” and a “personal payment” from the News of the World. A Court Order rescinding the Feb 3rd request for disclosure by Mulcaire and of the Screws’ settlement with Gordon Taylor, also states that there shall be no order as to costs, and makes no mention of a settlement, which effectively allows the Screws to deny any wrongdoing, despite this massive pay out to avoid having to make the potentially catastrophic disclosures ordered at the request of Clifford’s lawyers.

No wonder the deal has taken so long to work out, with all this give and take, though it seems likely, with Max holding the whip hand, and Ol’ Rumplechops hopping around in New York, worried shitless about the truth coming out, that he could have held out for a great deal more. After all, Les Hinton was in charge of News International at the time of their Royal phone hacking debacle, and there are few who doubt he knew what was going on, at leat as much as managing editor Stuart Kuttner (who master-minded the scheme), head of legals, Tom Crone and Andy Coulson, who was editor at the time. This is a big problem for Murdoch who is desperate to be perceived as a respectable, major player in New York, as the proprietor of the pre-eminent Wall Street Journal, which Les Hinton now fronts up for Rupert.

I understand that everyone has their price, as Rupert knows well. Since the Royal phone-hacking prosecution revealed five more victims, the Screws have already paid off Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the hacks who’d been hung out to dry. They have also given a fat fee to Elle Macpherson for an interview (by Sarah Brown, for heaven’s sake!) in their “Crapulous!” magazine, in which pages are devoted to plugging her range of knickers. They’ve paid Gordon Taylor and his minions c £1m in costs and damages.

But a lot of us were hoping Max would abide by his pledge, issued when he launched his claim against the Screws, that his principal aim was to uncover the Truth. He didn’t especially need the money (and anyway said he would give any proceeds of the suit to children’s health charities.) If he hadn’t take Rupert’s tainted money and persisted with his claim, and won (which he almost certainly would have done), he’d have been lucky to be awarded £30K – £50K, but the News of the World, the Metropolitan Police and Glenn Mulcaire would have been forced to produce details which would have had disastrous effects, possibly leading to widened charges over the original phone-hacking crimes.

So, the Murdoch’s have sort of got away with it this time (for a £1m + their own costs), but the temptation for the growing number of confirmed Screws’ targets to ask for more of the same has been magnified. It only needs one whose sense of public duty outstrips their own greed to go all the way, and force them to throw into the public domain details of endemic illegal news-gathering.

And back in Romania, Albania, and probably still in London,too, is a band of men who have been falsely accused, imprisoned on remand and subsequently acquitted as a result of fabricated stories cobbled together by disgraced Screws Investigations Editor, Mazher Mahmood. In the currrent climate, these victims of the Screws’ outrageous attitude to Truth and Justice could offer a profitable project for a good, hungry lawyer.

BBC ONLINE: DON’T CUT – JUST CHARGE

Peter — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:17:44 +0000

Instead of axing jobs on their Website to save money, the BBC should start charging for access to their online news services, which would give newspaper sites the chance to charge too, and thus generate revenue to replace their ebbing print sales and ad income. In future, this may be the only way they’ll be able to support quality newsgathering and journalism – and that’s going to become rare and valuable.

The Screws may hurl purses of gold at Max Clifford, to stop him asking embarrassing questions……

Peter — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:41:02 +0000

Tomorrow, Thursday 18th, Max Clifford’s lawyers were due in the High Court to request disclosure by the Metropolitan Police of all documents seized by them as they raided the offices of Screws’ investigator, Glenn Mulcaire when they arrested him in Aug 2006.
BUT, the hearing is not now listed.
Nor has the paper complied with an order in the High Court to disclose (by earlier this week) the terms of their agreement with Gordon Taylor when they gave him £700k+ after he pursued them for invasion of privacy by hacking his phones (although they still deny anyone in the paper knew). Nor has co-defendant, Glenn Mulcaire, as ordered by the court, disclosed the names of the paper’s management who ordered him to hack into Clifford’s voicemail (for which he has already been convicted.)
Could it be that the Screws would rather sign a very large cheque then reveal precisely who in the paper knew about the extensive phone hacking that’s come to light? After all….. how much can it be worth to avoid the risk of former editors going to jail for conspiring to offend under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000)?
And they’d have to pay Max Clifford a great deal more than the Court would award to make him drop a claim which he’s looking forward to pursuing.

Just as alarming is the demeanour of the Met, who seem determined not to assist anyone in establishing the truth, including the Commons CMS Committee. To say that Asst. Commissioner John Yates was economical with the truth when being questioned by the committee, would be to put it politely.
AND NOW… after all the rubbish press – the ShagRags and Arse-Wipers – have said they were cleaning up their act in the wake of the Screws’ blatant misbehaviour, someone’s been at it again. A Certain Footballer’s former lover has been told officially within the last fortnight that her voicemail and that of sympathetic friends have been accessed …….

WAS IT THE SCREWS, AGAIN?
Watch out for stories this Sunday with signs of phone hacking (as well as the usual hackery).
I hope to reveal more soon……..

Oh dear! Ole Rumplechops faces another big bill.

Peter — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:28:33 +0000

Those creative fellas at the Screws have been making up stories – again. Brad and Angelina are going to want more than a few Schillings for the tacky little newshounds’ report on their non-existent break-up. Looks like someone in Hollywood took them for a ride – again. They’ll have had to pay a lot for a tip like that, maybe from a real estate agent who got the wrong end of the stick when Pitt bought a new place [adjacent to the one he lives in with Angelina, by the way].

And maybe, after Max Clifford gets a result, there’ll be a whole lot more voicemail hacking victims wanting to get into Rupert’s wallet.