Now it only needs  the Fake Sheikh to have  the hood of his djellabah grasped  for us to call  ’HOUSE!’.

To this list must also be added the name of the Cock of the Wapping dung heap, the Sunday Arse-Wiper’s most notorious liberty-taker and rule-bender, Mazher Mahmood (STILL THERE).

Proud holder of the sobriquet, Fake Sheikh, Mahmood’s primary journalistic aim is to see his by-line on the front page of the paper as often as possible – though not so often these days.

Mahmood is also to be named in two claims against the paper for phone-hacking – by George Galloway, when Mahmood tried set up a sting to bribe him and failed, and by the former champion jockey, Kieren Fallon, once again the subject of a sting that went so wrong the resulting Old Bailey case collapsed through the paucity of evidence presented by the Fake Sheikh (and the City of London Police, this time, by the way) after which Fallon successfully sued the paper for libel and won £100,000+ in damages and costs.

Fallon has only recently – and reluctantly – been informed by the Met that Glenn Mulcaire had listed more than one of his mobile phone numbers, and evidence given by Mahmood and his team in court five years ago suggested that the journalists acquired some information in concocting their story by listening to messages left by Fallon on a friend’s voicemail.

Mahmood has for many years jealously guarded his own ‘investigations’ team (somewhat depleted these days) and most of the IT and technical stuff is carried out by Conrad Brown, son of the late Screws super hack, Gerry Brown. The simple task of voice-mail hacking would be well within his scope.

 What odds would you offer on ‘Onan’ and Mazher being ushered to the Wapping exit (with a sack of hush-dosh over their shoulders) before the summer Solstice?

Since then, a thick, turd-shaped cloud has hung over the editor in charge at the time, Smoothy Dave’s chief spinner, Andy Coulson.

Dave has shown great loyalty to a man who does not merit his trust. From today, the whole house of dodgy cards will start unravelling. There are dozens of people queuing up to sue the Screws for their criminal activities. It is not going to go away.

In July last year, I suggested this treament for the former editor of the Sun’s  sister paper, the Screws’, Andy “Notso” Coulson after he failed comprehensively to tell the truth to the Commons Culture Select Committee.

Under the heading “A Case for Waterboarding?“, I blogged……..

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 Mulciare, 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

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.

Still, one must – albeit grudgingly – hail Ol’ Rumplechops for having the bollocks to lead where others will have to follow.

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.

To the intense frustration of the committee and of those who care about the quality of British journalism, all the witnesses turned out to be suffering from an acute attack of contagious amnesia and truth frugalness. [See my blog] For these are people who have made their careers at Rupert’s Red Tops, delivering ‘journalism’ of such obfuscation and dishonesty, for so long, that it’s far too late to kick the habit.
   In a pitiful attempt to mislead the committee, they all ‘forgot’, or just ‘didn’t know’ any details relating to the events that culminated in the jailing of their Royal Editor, Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire, a Private Investigator contracted to the paper.
   In October, the Committee, determined not to be fobbed off with the persistent ducking and diving of the Screws bosses, formally posed a number of questions for them.
Among several anomalies that had arisen, they wished to know “the grounds on which advice was given to settle the claims [allegedly] made by Goodman and Mulcaire and the level of payments made”.
   Rebekah Brooks has now submitted her response. (This was viewable on the Committee’s page at www.parliament.uk up to 13th Jan.) Written in characteristic News of the World house style and buried in a miasma of obscured truth and elusive fact, it fails to answer either of these questions.
   With unexpected eagerness, she puts her hand up in conceding Goodman’s alleged claim for unfair dismissal. As they had “failed to meet minimum requirements” in relation to a dismissal, any affected employee would be entitled to bring a claim, “with a potential compensatory award of up to £60,600 (in addition to any contractual notice pay entitlement).”
But she also tells the Committee that the paper settled before a case was heard by any tribunal. The hypothetical sums and conditions she cites have no bearing on what they actually paid Goodman for signing “a standard-form News International compromise agreement,” – a euphemism for gagging agreement – and this despite the breach of his employment contract through his proven criminal activity. 
   The decoys and the irrelevant waffle in her answers were composed in order to put Rebekah Brooks’ pursuers off the scent; but, like much of the content of the News of the World, the result is ham-fisted, half-baked and easily seen through. There is an almost engaging naivety to her signing off. “… We trust that the answers given in this letter can now bring matters to a close.”
   Keep trusting, TestaRossa! Most observers will understand the subtext to her answer…..

You might think we gave them lots of money to shut them up and stop them telling the rest of the media who within the Screws hierarchy knew they’d deliberately broken the law by hacking into voicemails to get cheapo front page splashes, but you can’t prove it – so there!

The simple fact is that Goodman and Mulcaire were jailed for what they did. It follows therefore, that any other members of the Screws staff who were party to it are also liable to criminal prosecution and a jail sentence, including Andy Coulson and Stuart Kuttner.
The committee have shown commendable resolve in their pursuit of the truth over these activities.

They have a clear right and a public duty to insist on clear, frank and truthful answers from Rebekah Brooks.

[701]

As a result of a disturbing collaboration between the News of the World, the City of London Police (who took it on after the Met couldn’t see a case) and the Jockey Club (head of security – ex-policeman  Paul Scotney), Fallon was roped in and charged with a group of others of whom the Jockey Club had reason to be suspicious. Paul Scotney is widely on record as having expressed his almost obsessive desire to “get” Fallon. Thus Fallon had to undergo a long, gruelling trial for charges which, if provable, would have seen him in jail and his illustrious career in tatters, purely by association with some of the other parties on trial.
But as it turned out, Mahmood’s evidence against Fallon was so severely tainted by lies and manipulation of teh facts in his efforts to produce a big story, that the judge had little option but to instruct the jury to throw it out along with the somewhat shaky case produced by the Jocjey Club against the other parties.
Once the criminal trial was out of the way, Fallon was free to pursue the News of the World for the horrendous libel they had published about him. The paper settled at once and, not for the first time, Rupert Rumplechops had to watch as his inept newsmen handed out a few hundred thousand more from his coffers in damages and legal costs.

Worth Noting:
This was yet another example of bungling by former Screws editor (AND TORY HEAD SPINNER), Andy Coulson (since disgraced over the royal phone-tapping), and long-time managing editor Stuart Kuttner, sacked this year for his part in the Gordon Taylor phone-hacking debacle.