Red Top Rundown
James Murdoch… disingenuous, or just lying?
Although, as both Murdochs have assured the HoC Culture Committee, the News of the World was a paltry, unimportant adjunct to their mighty media empire. Nevertheless, as James authorised the payment of the thick end of a million quid to Gordon Taylor, he must still have wondered which journalist (among his 50,000 employees) had pursued a (unpublished) story which was costing more than a paltry amount. Or did he simply assume it was the work of former Screws Royal editor, Clive Goodman (the sole ‘rogue reporter’)?
Incredibly, that is what he expected the Commons CMS committee to believe.
If I were them, I’d be feeling deeply insulted.
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Good Luck, Mr Kuttner.
Congratulations to Asst. Dep.Com. Sue Akers for finally feeling the collar of the ring master in the circus of lies and deceit that was the News of the World. We can assume that Ms Akers is not a member of Kuttner’s lodge, which, of course will have made the job easier.
Now it only needs the Fake Sheikh to have the hood of his djellabah grasped for us to call ’HOUSE!’.
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What the MPs should have asked James Murdoch …..
Mr Murdoch, you have conceded that Gordon Taylor had to be paid because his phone had been hacked by Muclaire on behalf of the News of the World.
Your executives Myler, Crone, Kuttner, Coulson, Hinton all told the CMS committee in 2009 that there had only been one rogue reporter, Clive Goodman – the Royal editor – and continued asserting this, as did you, right up until 2010.
Are you telling us that you and your executives believed that the extensive phone hacking of Gordon Taylor and his assistants by Mulcaire was ordered by Clive Goodman, the one rogue reporter?
And did they (and you) believe that Goodman also instructed Mulcaire to hack into the phones of Skylet Andrew (a footballers’ agent), Simon Hughes, and Max Clifford, all of whom were named as victims of Mulcaire’s hacking when he was convicted in January 2007?
If they didn’t believe this (and they could not possibly have believed it), they all lied to Parliament when they re-asserted their claim that Goodman was the only guilty reporter.
The obfuscation, the hesitation, the avoidance of direct answers, the high pitched protesting whine, as well as the inconsistency of fact when James Murdoch appeared before the committee on Tuesday were all convincing indicators that he too has now lied to parliament.
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Oh Guys! You should’ve got the TestaRossa against the ropes.
Apart from providing Rupert Rumplechops with a PR coup – a piece of reverse spin that his former (?) employee, Andy Coulson might have cooked up (as he did for George Osborne back in 2005) – which showed the world how much his athletic young wife loves a growling old billionaire, the Culture Media Sport Committee’s grilling didn’t produce more than a little warm toast.
Restricted as they were by sub judice topics in the case of Rebekah Testarossa, they might have done better to leave this session until the future, when she would not have been in a position to bat away their questions with another clutch of well-honed lies, the way all her colleagues did in 2009.
They could have asked…..
When, in May 2006, she saw that the News of the World carried a story in which they reproduced a verbatim message left by Prince William on Prince Harry’s voicemail, did she not question to the legality of the means by which the story was found? Or did she just think that Coulson, Thurlbeck and Goodman hade made it up? When she became CEO of News International did she not question News of the World managing editor, Stuart Kuttner about it?
Why was News editor Greg Miskiw sent packing in July 2005, shortly after the Gordon Taylor story went wrong?
Why was Stuart Kuttner sacked in 2009, the day before the Guardian revealed the Taylor pay off.
Why was Tom Crone sacked two weeks ago? (Yes, they asked her but they didn’t challenge the absurdity of her mendacious reply.)
Let us hope that the Metropolitan Police are less lenient in their questioning. At least we know Rebekah’s not a member of the same Lodge as the Senior MET Freemasons – that august charitable organisation still doesn’t allow women members – or does it, and they just haven’t told us?
Watch this trowel.
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I TOLD SKY NEWS LES HINTON WAS IN THE FRAME
In a real time live interview I gave to Sky News at 4:30pm on Friday 8th July, when asked if responsibility for the downfall of the News of the World would reach as far as Rebekah Brooks, I stated my view that it would reach beyond her to Les Hinton, former NI executive chairman (until July 2007) and now boss of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journalm (the Jewel in Rupert Murdoch’s personal crown.)
Over the weekend, this contention has been taken up by The Guardian and the Finanacial Times, and the BBC are looking at it.
I was very unimpressed by Hinton’s video link evidence to the CMS Committee in September 2009. He looked to me very much like a man who was not telling the truth.
I hope shortly to be proved right.
My prediction for the next suspect to be arrested by the police and dragged in for questioning is Stuart Kuttner, managing editor at the News of the World for 22 years, and behind every nefarious and criminal action taken within that depraved and morally bankrupt organisation.
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How many more Screws collars will be felt?
The police seized a reported 11,000 documents from Glenn Mulcaire’s office when they raided it in August 2006. There can be no question that the information held within these documents would have been known by journalists at the paper, as well as management, who paid Mulcaire. This information included details of the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone.
News International have now “admitted” they have had this information for four years (at least five, in fact). I watched Andy Coulson (former editor) Colin Myler (current editor), Stuart Kuttner (managing editor/chief dirty tricks organiser for twenty years and at least 8 editors) and Tom Crone (head legal honcho) of the News of the World tell a parliamentary committee that there was absolutley no further evidence of phone hacking, and that Clive Goodman (jailed Royal claptrapper) was a lone rogue reporter.
They were all lying…..
Here’s how I reported it at the time …
The MPs on the Culture, Media, Sport Committee must have been asking themselves yesterday, what on earth a reasonable person could do when confronted with three hardened, well-rehearsed liars, all desperate to avoid having their collars felt?
Experienced interpreters of body-language can enjoy a revealing session by tuning into the video-archive of yesterday’s oral evidence in front of the CMS Committee in Portcullis House.
Andy Coulson – bullish, assertive, knowing his best defence is attack, with a dash of cheeky chappy charm.
Tom Crone – for once not so sure of his ground, nervously cutting in a little too quickly when little Colin Myler gets it wrong, with a giveaway sheen of sweat on the strong, ruddy features.
Stuart Kuttner – eau de nil, haunted, shaking like an aspen, fiddling, fiddling, picking up his water, putting it down undrunk, rearranging files and pens, moving his large spectacles from side to side – meaning, for those who speak body language, that he is shitting himself; that after an ignominious dismissal by … who? Which Mr Murdoch? … his long, wicked career at the Screws is well and truly on the skids.
Little Colin Myler doesn’t need to lie. He wasn’t there when events at the centre of this enquiry took place. [When he’d arrived, he did arrange a few training sessions in act-cleaning-up for his newsroom hacks. But did Mazhher Mahmood and Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck attend? From the continuing and relentless shoddiness of their output, it seems they were excused – or just weren’t paying attention.]
When Crone, legal boss of News Group is asked about the terms of a pay-off to Glenn Mulcaire, a former investigations contractor who has been imprisoned for carrying out tasks from which his company profited, and he claims he doesn’t know what those terms were (although he’s very sure that Mulcaire did not sign any non-disclosure agreement), you have to conclude either that he is suffering from severe amnesia and should instantly be relieved of his post, or that he is not telling the truth.
He directed the MPs to ask Stuart Kuttner.
When Kuttner told the MPs, confirming that an arrangement had been made with Glenn Mulcaire, he too was utterly unfamiliar with the terms, conditions and size of the pay-off, and that he didn’t know who in an organisation of which he has been Managing Editor for 22 years was responsible for making such arrangements, you have to conclude that he has become insane – for imagining that any rational person would believe him.
When Andy Coulson tells his questioners that he has no recollection whatever of a story, flagged on the front page of an issue of the paper that he’d edited, occupying the whole of Page 7, depicting a verbatim transcript of a message left by one prince on another prince’s voicemail, knowing that not a single person in the Wilson Room in Portcullis House, or viewing the session on Parliament TV, or in the evening news broadcasts would believe him, you a have to conclude that here is a youngish man who sees his whole future in jeopardy if he breaks and admits to a scintilla of knowledge of the phone-hacking that was involved in acquiring the story.
It was very clear that before the three men came in to answer the awkward questions that would be put to them, they had agreed between themselves that they would simply declare either that they didn’t know the answers or that they couldn’t remember the events.
Although this made them look utterly ridiculous, and Tom Crone, as a senior media lawyer, a disgrace to his profession, they knew, if they toughed it out, there was little the MPs could do, for, naturally, there was never a paper trail to confirm the involvement of any of them in the Goodman/Mulcaire case – and short of getting them to submit to US Intelligence gathering techniques on the waterboard, there was nothing more the committee could do to extract the verité.
It was a sad day for British justice and the state of British popular journalism.
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DID THE SCREWS FAKE THE PAKISTANI SPOT-FIXING EVIDENCE?
It looks very much as if the News of the World, along with their thousands of other illegal acts, have faked the evidence of their biggest story last year. Half the video they initially put up was taken down after I questioned its validity. What remains could easily have been re-voiced, or filmed retrospectively – in other words, after the no-balls had occurred. In any event it is clear that no one could possibly have profited from an investment of £15oK and the whole story was a construct by Mazher Mahmood, who has run similar scams many times before, often with co-operation from the Met. Talk about sleeping with the enemy……..The News of the World is a criminal organisation which should be banged up as soon as possible.
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The Met & the Screws must start delivering real answers
The revelations about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone will intensify demands for clear answers from the Metropolitan Police and News International.
In 2002, the News of the World illegally accessed the voicemail of missing schoolgirl, Milly Dowler after she had disappeared. The news, which broke on Monday , has shocked a public already deluged with revelations about the paper’s phone-hacking of celebrities, sportsmen and politicians in a quest for intimate details of their target’s private lives. This new disclosure involving a non-celebrity victim of abduction and murder shines a disturbing new light on the scandal.
The Dowler family’s lawyer, Mark Lewis has issued a statement describing the paper’s actions as ‘heinous and despicable’, causing the family ‘distress heaped upon tragedy’.
Having logged and recorded the messages he had retrieved, Glenn Mulcaire, the paper’s contracted private investigator, then deleted older messages in Milly Dowler’s inbox once it was full, in order to free up space for further messages from Milly’s distraught friends and family, which he also intercepted and passed back to News of the World reporters and editors.
The paper took particular interest in the Dowler case, they have claimed, as part of their high profile campaign against paedophile activity – a campaign launched and closely overseen by the paper’s then editor, Rebacca Wade (now Brooks), and her deputy, Andy Coulson, who has already resigned from the paper and the Prime Minister’s Press Office over his connection with previous phone hacking scandals.
By deleting messages illegally retrieved from Milly Dowler’s phone, the paper misled her family into believing she had emptied her inbox and was still alive – when she was not. This gave the family hope, which was exploited by the paper in publishing optimistic interviews with them.
In deleting the earlier messages, the paper had also removed information that would have had a direct impact on the police investigation of Milly’s disappearance.
This new development could turn out to be a major turning point in a scandal which has been rumbling like a volcano with growing volume for two years, since it was revealed in July 2009 that the paper had settled an alleged £700,000 with Professional Footballers’ Association president, Gordon Taylor, in recognition of their invasion of his privacy by phone-hacking, for a story that was never published.
It is significant that this is the first hard News of the World phone-hacking story to have emerged which relates to the editorship of Rebecca Brooks. Up until now, police inquiries, for reasons never adequately explained, have focused on the years 2005 and 2006, when the paper was under Andy Coulson’s editorship. In August 2006 Clive Goodman, the paper’s royal reporter and Glenn Mulcaire were arrested, pleaded guilty and subsequently imprisoned for hacking into the voicemails of Prince Charles’ staff at Clarence House. Under questioning, Andy Coulson has told a Scottish Court in the perjury trial of Tommy Sheridan, and a Commons Culture, Media, Sport Select Committee inquiry that he was completely unaware of any illegal phone hacking activity on the paper he ran. He claimed initially that Clive Goodman was a single ‘rogue’ reporter. Since then four News of the World journalists have been arrested on charges of phone hacking, and several more have been suspended or helped to move on from the paper.
Rebacca Brooks is now Chief Executive Officer of News International, which is very close to finalising negotiations with the Coalition Government over their acquisition of 100% of BSkyB, where currently they own only 39%.
It is likely that this latest story of the paper’s illegal activity will raise further substantive questions over News International’s suitability to be responsible for a near monopoly in some key areas of broadcasting in this country. This will also cause many to question more closely whether it is appropriate for the Prime Minister to maintain a close friendship with Rebecca Brooks with whom he attended a private dinner over Christmas and who was present at his exclusive birthday party at Chequers last year.
Mulcaire has claimed in the past that he was the last link in a chain of command in the paper, simply responding to the instructions he had received down the line from his de facto employers. Speculation about the length and composition of the chain is now bound to increase, with attention focussing on just how far up the chain knowledge and condonation of Muclaire’s activities stretched.
If it were to reach up, through Rebecca Brooks and Andy Coulson, to their former Executive Chairman, Les Hinton, it is likely that Rupert Murdoch, already heartily sick of the whole mess surrounding his Sunday tabloid, would be forced to take action at his most prized possession, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, where Hinton is now CEO.
Over the past year it has emerged that a strong symbiotic relationship exists between News International and the Metropolitan Police. The question now troubling many seekers after truth is whether or not the Met have any real interest or motivation in bagging trophies of this magnitude.
This piece was first published at thefirstpost.co.uk: http://tinyurl.com/6f3z83s
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Don’t Mention the Masons
Nick Davies in the Guardian yesterday made the first mention I have seen yet of a Masonic connection to the phone hacking Scandal.
Large sections of the British population ( at least, of those who are intelligent enough to be interested) are baffled by the extraordinary display of inertia in the Met’s handling of crimes committed by News of the World journalists and those committing outsourced crimes on the paper’s behalf. When the police do extraordinary, mysterious things , it’s always worth looking for the Mason in the woodpile. How many members of the senior management of News International and the News of the World are Freemasons? We don’t know, of course. How many senior members of the Metropolitan Police are Freemasons? We don’t know.
Thanks to Nick Davies’s investigations for the Guardian we do know that the multi-faceted criminal, Jonathan Rees (who hacked into the bank account of Peter Mandelson, among others) is a Mason and as a result was able to meet many corrupt police officers at his Lodge, and arrange to pay them for information, which he then sold to clients, like the News of the World.
Masonry is one of the most insidious, disgraceful aspects of British life. It secretly permeates the police, the judiciary, the professions, county councils and government departments . If Masonry is seen to be a factor in the NOTW crimes and the systematic cover-up by the police, that institution, too, must be looked at.
It should be, but that will never happen because there is too much power and influence vested in this secret, self-serving organisation.
Even Private Eye don’t have the balls to take them on.
It’s very heartening that Nick Davies has had the courage to name them in this criminal context.
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Neville Thurlbeck and the woman from the CPS
The Screws ‘apology’ for its wholesale phone-hacking activities, of course, is an act of cynical pragmatism.
For them the only thing that is “A matter of genuine regret” is the fact at they’ve been finally, irrevocably caught.
They paid millions in legal fees and settlements against the actions brought by Max Clifford and Gordon Taylor to avoid having to make disclosures.
Now, by putting their hands up and offering and uncontested settlement, they avoid the massive legal costs, and still don’t have to disclose any incriminating details.
What they are admitting to now are crimes which the Metropolitan Police should and could have uncovered four years ago.
We need to know what hold the Screws had over the Met and individual senior officers which deterred them from doing this.
Former MP and CMS Committee member, Adam Price has said that the paper also put pressure on MPs to deter them from questioning the ridiculous and mendacious Rebekah ‘Testarossa’ Brooks.
Even more alarming than this, is the closeness between the Prime Minister and Andy Coulson, clearly a party to many conspiracies to hack voice-mails and almost certainly now a candidate for collar-feeling, and his former boss, the Testarossa, who was one of the few outsiders at his birthday party at Chequers last year. She too is inextricably involved in these crimes.
Why, too, have the CPS been so docile?
Why was a female employee of the CPS seen on holiday, motoring through France with the Screws star shag’n’brag reporter, Neville ‘Onan the Barbarian’ Thurlbeck?
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Hello Peter
Listening to you at the Leveson Inquiry today, I thought you might be interested to have a look at ...
@Fleur,
I suspect he still has a job because he knows where the bodies are buried. 
Not much to write home about Neville? 
hi peter,great website. i bought your book news of the world and managed to get hold of CAMERA ASSASSIN 2 ...
they finally caught the little toad if he can lie at a small tribunal he certainly can rely on ...