The real target of the New York Times in their reopening of the Coulson affair, if not Rupert Murdoch himself, is Les Hinton, an Englishman (now naturalised American) in New York, and currently CEO of Dow Jones, publishers of the Wall Street Journal.

In January 2007,  two men working for the News of the World were jailed for illegal phone-hacking, while Hinton was Executive Chairman of Screws owners, News International in London.

He is a deeply experienced, hard-nosed, long-serving, loyal Murdoch henchman. When I was researching for my book, News of the world? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings, I was told by very well placed associates of the then NI chairman that knowledge of the illegal practices at the News of the World would certainly have stretched right up to Les Hinton, and nothing he has said since has convinced me otherwise. When the Commons Culture Media Sport Committee took evidence from him last autumn during their inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal, while denying any knowledge, his nervousness and body-language failed to convince anyone of the innocence he professed of any involvement in the paper’s illegal activities.

The NYT is famously involved in a pretty desperate circulation war with the Wall Street Journal, and to bring about its CEO’s disgrace would be a very useful feather in its cap in a nation which is even more anti-News Corp than this one.

If the police and the two parliamentary committees now involved do manage to make the truth (which is so obvious to all observers) stand up, Les Hinton’s head will be on the railing spikes alongside Andy Coulson’s and that of sacked former managing editor, Stuart Kuttner.

David Cameron is getting most of the stick for his lack of judgement in appointing a man so obviously tainted as Andy Coulson, but it should be remembered that he was reacting to the urging of his then Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne.

Osborne already had a relationship with Coulson, encompassing some apparently bizarre anomalies.  This friendship went 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 then unflawed Shadow Chancellor, it claimed that eleven years before, while he was at Oxford, 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 wasn’t the only one struck, not by the damage that might have been done to the young politician, but by how much good it had done him. After all, the story didn’t say George himself had 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 little 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.

            No doubt it was Coulson’s skill in devising sophisticated reverse/negative spin that attracted Osborne and maybe convinced Cameron. A good example of this was evident this year when it was ‘leaked’ that Samantha Cameron had once voted Green as a student.

Pretending  that the leak was alarming to them, Cameron’s camp knew that it certainly hadn’t done any damage and it would do a great deal of positive good in suggesting David Cameron’s broadness of vision and sympathy with those beyond the standard Tory pale.

However, it’s likely that the government will soon have to manage without this gifted manipulator of information, and perhaps William Hague won’t be too sorry about that.

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It’s a a great pity that we must be reminded of our Prime  Minister’s connection with Rupert Rumplechops through his choice of the Wall Street Journal (The Jewel in the coronet of Rupert’s vanity) in which to write his well-judegd words about the realities of the “Special Relationship”. Of course, DC’s in-house spinner, Andy Coulson is a former partner in crime with WSJ CEO, Les Hinton. How long will he remain to taint the air in Downing Street? The countdown has started.

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The Commons Culture, Media, Sport Select Committee would like to talk to Rebekah Brooks, the titian-tressed scrapper who has been suprema of News International since last September. If she complies with their request to see them – and she will try very hard to wriggle out of it – it is to be hoped that she’ll shed more light on criminal activities at the News of the World than did Senior executives Tom Crone (Head of Legals), Stuart Kuttner (ex-Managing Editor), and former editor Andy Coulson, when they were called to give evidence over their phone-hacking to the Committee last summer. She may also remember more than Les Hinton, who was in her current chair when the raiding of the Royal voicemails came to light in August 2006. In September he spoke to the Committee by video link from New York, where he is now boss of the Murdochs’ Wall Street Journal. He had no recollection about key decisions, such as were the hackers paid off after being sacked for their criminal activity.

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.

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Last week, News Corp chief operating officer, Peter Chernin announced his tactical withdrawal from the post. There’s been a lot of speculation that his action may presage his skipper steering the Titanic media conglomerate straight at the iceberg of recession with not enough lifeboats on board. And he knows his skipper longs to take on a pile more passengers, which might sink the mighty liner before it’s even hit the ‘berg.

But the Rumpled One must be cursing his bad timing.

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