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

I hope this doesn’t spoil your  breakfast, but it’s important we should know how diligently  this man goes about his work. – before we judge him too harshly.

Thurlbeck is  the hard-nosed  hack who usually handles the dirtier celebrity shag’n'brag  stories for the News of the World. A sting went badly wrong for him a few years ago. He’d set out to expose a naturists’ boarding house whose owners allegedly offered ‘extra’ sexual services to guests. Having made his investigations, Thurlbeck carelessly forgot to ‘make his excuses and leave’ (in the time-honoured News of the World manner). Instead, no doubt to his eternal regret, he made his excuses and came. He was  caught on film begging the couple to have sex while he stood at the foot of their bed, exposed what, in its primmer days, the News of the World would have called his ‘manhood’ and indulged in an unmistakable act of onanism. Since the film was posted on the internet to the delight of his fascinated colleagues, it was inevitable that sooner or later the moniker ‘Onan the Barbarian’, bestowed on him by an uncharitable ex-colleague, would stick.

Telling lies to judges in court is an imprisonable offence.

If Rebekah decides he has to go, he’s going to cost Master James an awful lot in ‘be discreet’ money. We’ve never heard how much his former dodgy colleague, managing editor for 25 years, Stuart Kuttner was awarded when he was sacked (to get this arch-organizer of illicit practices out of the way before the dung hit the windmill).

Have the MET raided his gaffe yet, I wonder? Not too late, DAC Sue Akers.

What next?

If Ian Edmondson was involved, so was Andy Coulson

If Andy Coulson was involved, so was Rebekah Brooks.

If Rebekah Brooks was involved, so was Master James.

And if they were, it’s very likely that Les Hinton, CEO of The Wall Street Journal (the brightest bird in Rupert Murdoch’s bush), was involved, too, becasue he was Executive Chairman of News International at the time.

 And then there’s the Fake Sheikh, the nation’s most mendacious hack……

Watch my next blog….

But what next?

Andy Coulson, called as a witness in the perjury trial of Scottish politician Tommy Sheridan at the end of last year, declared under oath that he had no knowledge of all the phone-hacking that was going on at the News of the World when he was in charge there.

Over the last 18 months, since he blatantly dissembled in front of the Commons Culture Media Sport committee, it has become increasingly unlikely that this is true.

Could another perjury trial now be on the horizon?

 Answer: Because that executive is Les Hinton, former Executive Chairman of News International in London, at the time when two men were caught and jailed for phone-hacking, of which, he claimed at the time and since to the Commons CMS Committee, that he, the editor Andy Coulson, and every other executive and senior journalist at the paper had absolutely no knowledge.

Now that it’s clear that dozens of senior staff and employees of the paper not only had knowledge of what the ‘one rogue journalist’ was doing, but were all busy doing it themselves, it begins to look as if perhaps Les did know more than he was admitting, perhaps even to the extent that he could be deemed complicit – even a co-conspirator in plans to invade the voice-mails of hundreds, possibly thousands, of targets deemed newsworthy by the paper.

 As current head of a newspaper which is the most illustrious in the News Corp stable and is also Rupert Murdoch’s most cherished possession, one can imagine that there is serious pressure on Hinton not to be shown to be party to such sordid little crimes. That was why he is taking such an interest in this and no doubt all the dozens of other cases which are ranged up against the News of the World by those seeking recompense for the paper’s criminal violation of their right to privacy.

 Best of Luck, Les!

Anyone with a brain who has followed the progress of investigations into and civil actions against the illegal activities of what Max Mosley has pithily described as “a criminal organisation” is aware that the cocky, grey-suited little fellow who now occupies an office by the PM’s in Downing Street (acting as a high-speed link between his current boss and his former bosses) could not possibly have been unaware of the methods used by his hacks to get many of their exclusive stories about the private peccadilloes of s’lebs and other public figures, and that he was – putting it bluntly – lying his arse off when he made this claim to Parliament and subsequently to the police and anyone else who has asked (including the regrettable Tommy Sheridan in a Glasgow court this week).

      Of course, it isn’t only the Met who are guilty of sucking up to Rupert Rumplechops by believing and protecting his man, it is also – and this is more than just regrettable – our wholesome and otherwise right-minded new Prime Minster. After the last election, a majority of voters weren’t too dismayed at the idea of the coalition; as it becomes clearer that this has turned out to be a NewsCorp/Tory/Liberal coalition we are rapidly becoming less happy about it.

Simon McKay, author of Covert Policing Law & Practice is quoted in the Guardian: “That is nonsense, and a recurring problem with this police position in this case. The police are getting confused about a number of things relating to the evidential status of a voicemail.”

Government guidelines on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa), which deals with the interception of phone communications make clear the illegality of hacking into all voicemails.

“I don’t know where the police are getting this interpretation from,” a senior lawyer close to the case told the Guardian. “It’s well known that Ripa is not the clearest piece of legislation, but these guidelines seem pretty clear.”

It is likely that it was the News of the World who persuaded the police it was legal to hack voicemails which had already been listened to by their intended recipient, because this was precisely the argument used by Screws management to persuade private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire to start his hacking.  ”It’s like somone opening a letter they’ve been sent, reading it then discarding it in the street where anyone could pick it up,” was how they justified it, with quaint, twisted logic. They also promised Mulcaire that if he didn’t do as he was told,  he wouldn’t see his contract renewed – a threat which was further applied to make him subsequently hack into unlistened to voicemails.

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.

The NYT is unequivocal in its conclusion that Coulson knew about, and was therefore complicit in an offence which saw two people working for him go to jail.

It was in any case very clear from Coulson’s evidence to the Common’s Culture Media & Sport Committee last year that he wasn’t telling the truth when he denied any knowledge of one specicfic high-profile royal story about which he could not possibly have been unaware, and which had been illegally obtained.

The Government should not under any circumstances be harbouring people of this moral calibre; it maybe that Coulson will soon be charged as a party to a proven crime and rehoused at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Much better to get shot of him first – as I have consistently advocated since he was appointed by the Conservatives in 2007.

Who else knew, besides Coulson? Managing editor, Stuart Kuttner, who was sacked for his ineptness in covering up, and former News Internationl CEO, Les Hinton, who blathered like a school kid denying he’d eaten the sweets when  questioned by the CMS Committee?

Another aspect of the liability which Osborne represents for his party lies in the origin of his very close relationship with Andy Coulson, the disgraced former editor of the News of the World.
   This friendship goes back several years, to autumn 2005, just before the annual conference, when Coulson ran a front page splash in the Screws…
   TOP TORY, COKE AND THE HOOKER
   Illustrated with pictures of the angel-faced Shadow Chancellor, it claimed that eleven years before, while he was at Oxford, the then flawless Osborne was said, without any convincing corroboration, to have looked on while ‘dominatrix’ hooker, Natalie Rowe, snorted a line of coke. Her boyfriend, an unnamed friend of Osborne’s had gone on to become an addict, the report alleged.
   It was, on closer inspection, an archetypal Screws non-story, devoid of any hard content, worded so as to avoid any come-back, but just salacious enough to justify its front page status, and, of course, devoid of any genuine revelations about the politician, beyond the fact that in his youth he’d had a friend who knew a prostitute and who’d become addicted to an unspecified drug.
   When the story appeared, I remember being struck not by the damage that might have been done to the ambitious young politician, but by how much good it had done him. After all, the story didn’t say George himself had actually done anything at all.
   He hadn’t snorted the coke, and he hadn’t taken advantage of the hooker’s professional skills, ‘dominatrix’ or otherwise. But it did make him look, by association, as if he’d lived a bit and had a touch of grubby humanity to him, which went a long way to counter the unsexy image of a choir-boy-coiffed goody-two-shoes, that must have been causing concern in the Party’s image department.
   In a well-constructed profile of Coulson in the Guardian, John Harris noted that Osborne and Coulson had ‘got on well’, even while discussing the Screws ‘exposé’, although, at the time the article was published, the people around Osborne told Harris that he was suffering severe tummy rumbles and telling everyone how upset he was.
   Well, he would, wouldn’t he?
   There’d be little point in constructing a subtle piece of well-spun double-bluff, then rushing around telling people how chuffed about it you were. For this astutely ironic act of spin, Andy established his credentials with Osborne and, at least covertly, made his political allegiance known.
George and Andy were still in touch after Andy’s resignation from the Screws for his role in the Royal phone hacking debacle, and it was then that Osborne persuaded his boss that Coulson was just the man to give the white-tie-and-tails Bullingdon folk some much-needed street cred among the elusive middle ground voters.

Osborne no doubt sees it as part of his job to get close to people of great wealth and commercial power, as evidenced by his presence in Corfu in Autumn 2008, when he skipped between three monster yachts belonging to the Murdochs, Rupert’s son-in-law Matthew Freud, and Russian mega-oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, from whom he famously failed to extract a donation (while crapping on his old friendship with the mightily oofy Nathaniel Rothschild). He happily allowed himself to be pampered and wooed by Ole Rumplechops and his Titian-tressed larrikin, Rebekah Brooks, while at home Andy Coulson strengthened the bonds between the Tories and News Corp.
   This relationship has been almost irrevocably sealed by the Sun’s conversion to the Conservative cause, the party’s concurrence with Murdoch briefing on the BBC, and the continuing, high risk loyalty being shown to Coulson despite all the outrageous lapses of memory and lacunae of knowledge he displayed in front of the Commons Culture Media & Sport Committee last summer.
   It is this relationship, more than anything Gordon does or doesn’t do, that will do the real damage to Cameron’s electoral chances among the voters that matter – those who take the trouble to scrutinise and weigh the issues before they vote, rather than those who simply vote along tribal lines.
   It’s too late re-instate Ken Clarke where he belongs, which would appease a lot of the wavering conservative support (while the Europhobes will still vote for Cameron, rather than Nigel Farrago.)
   But it’s not too late to ask Coulson to go.
   If the Tories don’t dump him, but still get in, are they ready to risk the great flock of chickens out there, flapping their wings before coming home to roost on Coulson’s back, come the autumn?