Andy Coulson’s been out of the news since his new salary was as No 10’s head spinner was revealed a month ago.
Not for long.
Coulson’s spectacular stonewalling, sidestepping and truth economy that we witnessed last year in front of the Commons Culture Committee are about to turn round and bite him (and his trusting boss) in the arse.
A lot of hard-working journalists on both sides of the Atlantic have been working on this important revelation of the truth since Nick Davies of the Guardian, a year ago today, revealed that The News of the World had paid off Gordon Taylor for hacking his phone.
However adept the Screws people have become at covering their tracks and misleading their interrogators, when up against investigative reporters of quality, they are bound sooner or later to stub their toes.
So far, the only head among the foul-smelling cabal that has run the country’s most shameful Sunday paper to have been sacrificed is that of former managing editor Stuart Kuttner – ignominiously sacked after twenty years of journalistic malpractice.

Who will follow?
Among those who are having difficulty keeping their breaklfast down since an unexpected visitor at Wapping from New York last month are Tom Crone, Les Hinton and, most significant of all, Andy Coulson.

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Last Thursday, intrepid West Bromwich MP Tom Watson, who joined the Commons Culture Media & Sport Committee last summer after a stint in the Cabinet Office, asked the Solicitor General, Vera Baird if she would look into the question of whether or not the Crown Prosecution Service had successfully brought cases based on information gathered by illegal phone hacking at the News of the World.
    Presumably specific instances have been identified and Tom feels that this might explain the very obvious reluctance of the Metropolitan Police – specifically Asst Commissioner John Yates – to reveal all that they know about the extent and detail of the paper’s one time routine hacking of private voicemails to find the celebrity trivia stories on which they rely so heavily.
    It’s long been clear from prosecutions obviously instigated by the utterly discredited Screws former “Investigations Editor” (now Expensive Embarrassment) Mazher Mahmood, that there exists between the paper and the police more than the normal cosy relationships between a few detectives and a few crime reporters.
    With Mahmood, high profile cases were pursued by London police and prosecuted by the CPS – The “Red Mercury Dirty Bomb” scare, the Beckham’s “Kidnap” and the Kieren Fallon “Fixer” story (all of which collapsed through a complete lack of evidence) – which show that they are prepared to co-operate with the paper on the flimsiest, most fanciful of grounds. In return for what?
    Surely not simply the ongoing News International Sponsorship of the Police Bravery Awards ceremony?
    Of course, the police are aware, as is reported from New York by Murdoch biographer, Michael Wolff, that Rupert ‘Rumplechops’ is seriously concerned that the truth about the Screws lawless behaviour under the 20 year regime of (now sacked) Managing Editor, Stuart Kuttner and head lawyer, Tom Crone, will emerge, leaving Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal CEO, Les Hinton quite possibly implicated in the journalistic crime wave that was in operation while he was i/c News International.
    Certainly Hinton’s bumbling, obfuscating evidence given to the CMS Committee by video-link last autumn (and part of the “collective amnesia” described by committee chairman, John Whittingdale) was strongly indicative of his involvement and a guilty conscience.
    Could this be another reason why Young James Murdoch can’t wait to see the back of the embarrassing, venal old cow the Screws has become?

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 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.

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Tom Crone, head legal honcho at News International thinks he has something to crow about in NI’s staff Magazine “We’re News” (oh yeah?). He thinks that Mr Justice Tugendhat’s lifting of the super-injunction over reports of John Terry’s playing away is “a victory by the News of the World which will lead to a fundamental assessment of our draconian privacy laws.”

   I doubt it, given the ensuing feeding frenzy on the carcase of an old story about Ashley Cole and a more recent kill, Vernon Kay’s infidelity. This simply demonstrates yet again that large sections of the British press just can’t be trusted to find a balance between every individual’s right to a private life and the papers’ own perceived right to trumpet any intimate details (often regardless of the truth) of a public or semi-public figure’s life, that will sell their squalid little rags.

   Inevitably, there will always be a tension between the press (of all hues) who want (and might argue “need”) as few obstacles as possible to their telling the truth about those who are accountable – in some degree to - the public they serve, supply or entertain, and individuals who feel they have a right to protect details of their non-public activities that have no bearing on their public function – even if they do not conform to prevailing moral standards – so long as they are legal.

   Genuine newspapers respect this difference, and are rarely sued for breaches of privacy. But as long as the serious and the rubbish press are subject to the same checks and balances, the recidivist tendencies of the tabloids to damage individuals, with no public interest justification, will have to be curbed by effective statutory legislation despite the concerns of the grown-up press, because self-regulation has consistently failed.

   The Commons Select Committee for Culture Media and Sport spent most of last year hearing evidence for their Inquiry into Press Standards. After the alarmingly amnesiac performance of the News of the World (including Mr Crone’s) in the Committee Room it is likely to recommend that the problem is confronted by setting up an independent, external industry watch-dog, with real teeth and statutory powers of chastisemnt.

The committee will announce their recommendations on Wednesday.

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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.

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