Fascinating that Mulcaire accessed Brooks’ and Coulson’s emails. Should learn to spell name properly though.
Day 53, Part 1: Rebekah Brooks asked to chat to her former husband about phone hacking a fortnight before the scandal about the interception of Milly Dowler’s voicemail hit the headlines.
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A child sex abuse victim has identified a second house in the London borough of Richmond where children in care in the borough were taken en route to Elm Guest House.
The property in Avondale Road, Mortlake, has since changed hands but appears to be some sort of holding house for children in care who were taken out for the day.
The Met police have been informed about the existence of the property but it is not clear whether it is part of their current investigation under Operation Fernbridge.
A report by my colleague Mark Conrad on the Exaro website interviews the victim who says that he knows of other children taken to the property in the 1980s.
Elm Guest House is part of a current investigation but no charges have been brought against anybody for abusing children there. The guest house was at the time used by gays including it is claimed by MPs and other important figures. The Met Police have said that one of the visitors was Sir Cyril Smith, the Liberal Democrat MP, who since his death has been exposed as a paedophile.
An amazing insight into insider wheeler dealing when you are facing a legal suit from a very powerful figure
Day 52, Part 2: Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper group considered dispatching one of his favourite executives with a bundle of cash to settle a lawsuit for phone hacking, the Old Bailey heard today.
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An extraordinary statistic from the Metropolitan Police. If correct it shows a truly industrial hacking operation.
Day 52: News International staff or contractors made more than 6,000 calls to voicemail inboxes before police smashed the phone hacking operation at the News of the World, the phone hacking trial heard today.
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Remember according to CPS files released at the trial hacker Glenn Mulcaire made £1m from News International over the years. This is some of his work from 11,000 pages of notes.
Day 51: Glenn Mulcaire carried out only a dozen hacks or attempted phone hacks during Rebekah Brooks’s editorship of the News of the World, the phone hacking trial heard today.
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One of the most precious freedoms for journalists is the protection of their sources. Now it appears the Cabinet Office is using an obscure bill – as part of the government’s drive to cut “red tape”- as cover to erode that freedom.
By changing the rules to allow the police to go to court to obtain reporter’s notebooks, pictures and computer files- without facing an open challenge from newspapers, TV, or even individual freelance journalists themselves – they are placing that protection in serious danger.
No wonder the Newspaper Society is up in arms and media lawyers are raising very serious questions. There is an excellent and elegant argument on the Inforrm blog by Gill Phillips,the Director of Editorial Legal Services at Guardian News and Media, about the dangers.
She rightly concludes: “This appears to be yet another backdoor attempt to limit and restrict essential and hard-fought journalistic protections.”
Bloggers should also be aware of this as it could affect them – and they will be much more vulnerable to a police raid- as they would be in a weak position to defend themselves. It is worth reading Vox Political’s blog on this point and taking action.
The official response according to my former colleague Owen Bowcott in the Guardian has been muted.
He reports :A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “Every measure in the deregulation bill is intended to remove unnecessary bureaucracy. Clause 47 would bring the Police and Criminal Evidence Act into line with other legislation in this area and would allow the criminal procedure rules committee to make procedure rules that are consistent and fair.
” However, the government has noted the concerns raised about this issue and Oliver Letwin is happy to meet with media organisations about this before the bill goes to committee.”
I think the government should go further and drop this now. It can hardly save much money and I think their motives in introducing this are questionable and undo good work under the Defamation act and by the Information Commissioners’ Office to protect journalists from interference by the police and the state.
Sienna Miller’s testimony suggests the News of the World could have got the story through phone hacking – and the judge apologises to her for having to go through evidence about her private life to the court.
Day 50, Part 2: Sienna Miller said today that she probably would have left the sort of phone messages that a former News of the World reporter claimed he hacked with the knowledge of the paper’s editor Andy Coulson.
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The disclosure about fiddling expenses does indeed happen. The question is did the story come from a source or hacking or both?
Day 50, Part 1: A former News of the World reporter insisted today that Andy Coulson had hired him to hack phones. Dan Evans said he had told Mr Coulson, then the NoW’s editor, about his skills in voicemail interception during a job interview at a London hotel.
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Dan Evans admits ” flawed recollection” as Andy Coulson’s lawyer demolishes the detail of his evidence – but he insists the encounter over hacking with Coulson took place even if it was a different day.
Day 49, Part 2: A long-serving News of the World reporter has admitted making mistakes in his allegations about Andy Coulson’s involvement in phone hacking. At the start of his four-day testimony this week and in his police statement, Dan Evans said he had played the message left by Sienna Miller to Mr Coulson and another journalist at the NoW’s offices in Wapping on Tuesday 27 September 2005.
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More interesting stuff about bad journalism including making up quotes as Dan Evans faces a tough cross examination about his evidence.
Day 49, Part 1: Journalists on the News of the World often made up quotes for publication in stories, former NoTW reporter Dan Evans told the phone hacking trial today. Asked about comments from “friends” of Sienna Miller in a NoTW story, Evans said that it might come as a shock to the court but not everything in a tabloid newspaper was the “nailed-on” truth.
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Westminster Confidential 