I’ve learned that News International CEO Rebekah Brooks will not now be appearing in front of the House of Commons Culture Media Sport Committee to answer direct questions about the News of the World’s widely reported criminal phone hacking activities.
          This is bad news, particularly when the committee has shown commendable determination in trying to extract the truth from the paper about who in that organisation – management and hacks – knew what had happened, who sanctioned it and whether or not, as many suspect, it was endemic.
          Some cynics may see a connection between the facts that committee chairman, John Whittingdale is a Conservative, and his party’s Central Office, through the Machiavellian activities of their chief press officer and former Screws editor, Andy Coulson, have come to an understanding with News International, by which the Sun newspaper has switched allegiance from Brown to Cameron (for all the help that will be), in return for who knows what?
          This may lead the cynics to think there has been encouragement not to put pressure on Brooks to come and see the committee.
          I don’t think so, but the committee really has the Screws on the run and it would be a disatrous waste of their efforts, having got this far, they gave up now. We most of us understand that a stage may be reached in circumstances like this when it is so troublesome and difficult to extract the truth, that crimes go uninvestigated and unpunished – like those of the perpetrators of the massive Lloyds scam 30 years ago, or the activities of some bankers just two years ago. But to let a major British media group get away with blatantly breaking the law would be unforgivable. Sadly, and for myserious reasons, the Met are very reluctant to pursue further investigations.  

Brooks, the “Testarossa” (like the motor, highly tuned and temperamental) – is the ultimate UK boss of the Times, the Sunday Times, the News of the Screws and the Sun, and she’s a busy woman.
          Perhaps she won’t come, not because they haven’t asked her quite firmly enough, but because she’s too frightened of what she might say. Even her slipperiest, hardest-nosed, most rhino-skinned Screws execs tripped themselves up as they ducked and dived their way around the truth in the face of some serious probing from committee members Adam Price and Paul Farrelly.
          Or perhaps the committee think she’ll do as her underlings have done, and block every question with a ‘don’t know’ or a ‘can’t remember’.
          They could be right, and another session could be a waste of time. Certainly the written answers she’s already submitted are evasive and fail entirely to satisfy the questions put to her. (see yesterday’s blog)

It’s clear that crimes were being knowingly committed and it is out of the question that the two jailed scapegoats, Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire, were the only people who knew what was going on. John Whittingdale and his committee must continue to pursue her relentlessly until they have genuine, satisfactory answers and the names of the culprits.

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Among the muddle-headed ramblings that senior executives of the News of the World offered by way of evidence to the Commons Culture Media Sport Committee on July 21^st, there was at least one small grain of accuracy, although the details of even that are open to question.

          Tom Crone, head legal honcho at the Screws, was deftly ducking his way through some incisive questioning by CMS Committee chairman, John Whittingdale, who wanted to know what had happened to an email sent by a “junior reporter” to Private Investigator, Glenn Mulcaire.

          This email had been used by lawyers acting for PFA boss, Gordon Taylor in their action against the Screws for invasion of privacy. It contained a transcript of a message left on Taylor’s voicemail. This transcript had been prepared by the junior reporter and returned to Glenn Mulcaire with the heading, “Hello, this is the transcript for Neville,” clearly referring to senior reporter Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck who was working on the story.

          It will come as no surprise, though, that when Mr Crone questioned Thurlbeck about it, the position was that, “He had never seen that email, nor had any knowledge of it.  He says that he was brought into the relevant editorial project, the story, at the end of the story and his task was to go and knock on the door of one of the story’s subjects, which was either in Blackburn or Manchester, and put the essence of the story to the person in order to get their comments, which is mostly standard practice in what we do.”

          Coincidentally , it’s not the first time Thurlbeck has used this excuse for his extraordinarily hazy memory of major events. He gave exactly the same one when asked in the Mosley case if he knew the origin of a verbatim transcript of a voicemail message left by Prince William for Prince Harry. He had, amazingly, absolutely no idea that the story could have been obtained by illegal means, much as Andy Coulson told the CMS Committee an hour or so after Crone gave evidence last month.

          Crone went on to say, “When I spoke to (Thurlbeck) the first time he said he was briefed by one of our executives, Greg Miskiw who was then based in Manchester.  He subsequently came back to me and said that he had refreshed his memory and in fact it could not have been Greg Miskiw, because Greg Miskiw left the News of the World on 30 June 2005, which was the day after that email was created. (My italics) He had worked out his redundancy package, I think, a week or two weeks before that, and he was no longer on active duty.  Neville Thurlbeck told me that his refreshed memory told him that in fact the briefing that he received was from the London news desk.”

          John Whittingdale went on to ask if the London news desk was aware of the contents of this email.

          To which Crone replied, “Well, no, I went to speak to the relevant person at the London news desk who told me that he had no knowledge of the email and he had never seen it.”

          So Neville Thurlbeck was sent off to ask about a story based on a transcript which none of them were aware of?

          Crone admitted, “I do not know whether the story entirely came from the transcript; but certainly part of it must have come from the transcript, yes.”

          This was, of course, all standard Screws obfuscation tactics. 

          Crone said he had also questioned the junior reporter, who also had little recollection of the email and transcript.  But Crone did know that about this time, he had only just become a reporter. “Prior to that actually I think he had been a messenger and he was being trained up on the floor.  In the early weeks and months of him being trained up as a reporter what he did more than anything else was transcribe tapes of journalists’ interviews – whatever tapes were relevant to the News of the World.  He does not particularly remember this job in any detail; he does not remember who asked him to do it; and he does not remember any follow-up from it.  He saw the email and he accepts that he sent the transcript where the email says he sent it.”

          If the CMS committee had wanted to question the junior reporter, they would have found that in April of this year he left the paper, having filed several key stories about the fatal stabbings of London teenagers, Jimmy Mizen and Robert Knox.

          It seems almost too absurd that the Committee should be expected seriously to believe that a young reporter would have no recollection of transcribing an illegally obtained message left on the voicemail of the boss of the Professional Footballers’ Association.  And this young reporter, Ross Hall is no fool. He comes from a journalistic background, at least to the extent that his uncle, Phil Hall, now a leading PR, is a former editor of the News of the World.

          One of his colleagues told me that in the spring – about the same time managing editor Stuart Kuttner was learning about involuntary plans for his future – Ross Hall decided that he was fed up with working for the Screws, and took off to travel round the world.

          It may be a simple coincidence that his companion, a high profile young free-lancer also left the Sunday Mirror at exactly the same time and hasn’t worked in London since.

          So the one person who can say definitively who did or didn’t see the email which ultimately cost the Screws over £700k in damages and costs paid to Gordon Taylor is conveniently unavailable for some months to come.

          And Ross Hall’s disillusionment with Britain’s leading ShagRag wasn’t so great that it stopped him filing a little puff, disguised as a travel piece in the Screws, for the safari lodge where he was staying in Botswana in April.

          I wonder who he’ll be working for when he gets back from his travels.

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