Category Archives: media

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Phone Hacking Trial: Brooks asked to authorise cash payment to “serving police officer”, court told – Martin Hickman

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This latest disclosure shows Rebecca Brooks being asked to authorise payments to a serving police officer while editor of The Sun and allegations that the Sun had bribed a Ministry of Defence official to get premature disclosure of the deaths of serving soldiers in Afghanistan. In one case Rebekah Brook’s lawyer pointed to a MOD press release before they published the story.

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Rebekah BrooksDay 26: Rebekah Brooks was asked to authorise a cash payment to a “serving police officer” while she edited Britain’s best-selling national newspaper The Sun, the phone hacking trial heard yesterday.

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Phone Hacking Trial: Police investigate Army officer over £4,000 picture of Prince William in The Sun – Martin Hickman

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This vignette about a £4000 payment by the Sun for a picture of Prince William in a bikini shines light on another aspect of a current police investigation, Operation Elveden, corrupt payments to officials by News International. The court is told by the Met police that they have 60 officers pursuing 80 to 90 lines of inquiry – a very large operation indeed. Unusually the court is told of an existing police investigation- with one army officer due to be interviewed by the police about payments for the picture when he comes back from an overseas posting.

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sun-getcccctyDay 25: Detectives are carrying out a live investigation into whether a senior Army officer leaked a photograph of Prince William in a bikini to the Sun, the phone hacking trial heard today. An email from a Sun journalist discussing a payment of £4,000 for the image, taken at a fancy dress party while the prince was undergoing his military training, referred to it coming from “William’s direct platoon commander.”

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Phone Hacking Trial: Hundreds of hacking calls made from ‘private wire’ inside NI HQ, jury told – Martin Hickman

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This is a breathtaking disclosure of a huge number of hacking calls made not from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire who police discovered had been paid £1m by News International over many years but actually from inside News International HQ.
When one thinks it is alleged that Prince William and Harry’s private secretary was targeted 416 times in nine months and even journalists on the rival Mail on Sunday were receiving hacking calls this appears like an industrial scale enterprise.

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News-International-007Day 24: Hundreds of hacking calls were made from a “private wire” inside News International’s headquarters, the Old Bailey heard today.

Among those whose voicemails were accessed from the “generic” phone link at Wapping in east London were Katie Price, Tessa Jowell, celebrity PR advisor Alan Edwards and three Mail on Sunday journalists – Sebastian Hamilton, Dennis Rice and Laura Collins, the hacking trial was told.

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Glenn Mulcaire’s £1m payments from the News International

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A fascinating memo has been released at the hacking trial this week and published on the great blog by freelance journalist PeterJukes.
Written by Tom Crone one of News International’s former trusted lawyers and sent to Andy Coulson, then editor of the paper, it details information apparently obtained by Rebekah Brooks from the police on the progress of the police investigation into the later convicted hackers,ex Royal correspondent Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
It correctly predicts that the police are likely to ” bang to rights ” both of them. But interestingly it reveals that the police recovered invoices and payments totalling ” over a £1m” to Glenn Mulcaire revealing what a successful career the hacker had with the organisation over many,many years.
Ironically the cost of his work and others as Exaro News revealed before the trial has been secretly estimated by former News International chief executive as up to £1 billion in compensation to hacked victims,legal fees and support for suspended staff.
You can read the memo in full on Peter Jukes ‘s website plus two memos from Andy Coulson to his staff seeking new stories.
It is interesting to see how well-informed Rebekah Brooks was about the state of the investigation and what the police would later find out. A ” must read” I would say.

Phone Hacking Trial: Brooks explained how to hack phones at PM’s birthday party, jury is told – Martin Hickman

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This extraordinary evidence suggests that Rebekah Brooks was happy to discuss the technique of phone hacking while sitting at a Chequers party to celebrate the PM’s birthday in October 2010. The context appears to be whether his director of communications Andy Coulson – a former lover of Rebekah’s -could survive as David Cameron’s director of communications following the first revelations about the News of the World. A few months later Coulson resigned.

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Rebekah and Charlie BrooksDay 22: Rebekah Brooks explained how to hack a mobile phone at a birthday party for the Prime Minister at a country house, the Old Bailey heard today.  A close friend of David Cameron’s, Dom Loehnis, testified that Mrs Brooks had chatted about intercepting voicemails while he sat next to her during the celebration at the Prime Minister’s rural residence, Chequers, in October 2010.

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Phone Hacking Trial: Brooks told witness it was easy to hack phones of the famous, court hears – Martin Hickman

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Rebekah Brooks appears to be amazed how easy it is hack phones of the famous because they don’t have pin codes – but then why should they because they wouldn’t anticipate that their phones would be hacked.
Also note at the end of this report Rebekah’s unexplained request for a discreet meeting with her former lover Andy Coulson in 2011 just before he quit as David Cameron’s director of communications. The reference to not meeting at the Goring Hotel gives a great insight- it is a favourite with lobbyists, right wing journalists and some senior civil servants. They would be spotted.

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Eimear CookDay 21 (Part 2): Rebekah Brooks told the wife of a professional golfer how easy it was to hack the phones of famous people, the Old Bailey was told today.  Eimear Cook said that Mrs Brooks had warned her of the ease with which voicemails could be eavesdropped over lunch at the house of mutual friends.

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Transcript of the Goodman’s call to Coulson after being charged with Phone Hacking in 2006

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Read in full by clicking the link on Peter Jukes site the secretly taped conversation between Andy Coulson and hacker Clive Goodman two months before Goodman was jailed. The link is RSS 305 at the bottom of his post. It shows his concerns that at this stage the hacking investigation could easily be widened because of what the police have got from Glenn Mulcaire and a rather animated conversation on whether phone calls can be traced.

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Linked below is a transcript of the tape, played today in court today , between News of the World’s Royal Reporter Clive Goodman, and his editor Andy Coulson, around the 6th of November 2006.  Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. had been arrested in August and charged with hacking the voicemails of Royal aides a few weeks previously. They would both plead guilty at the end of  November 2006, and were sentenced in January 2007. Coulson resigned from his editorship of News of the World the same day

NB: Tom probably refers to Tom Crone, in house News International lawyer: Henri is Goodman’s solictior, and  Kelsey the barrister instructed by him. 

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Phone Hacking Trial: Coulson offered Goodman “every possible support” after arrest – Martin Hickman

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This secretly taped call between Andy Coulson and Clive Goodman – later to be jailed for phone hacking – reveals Coulson was prepared to back him to the end. It also reveals that as early as 2006 the NotW should have realised the game would be up because the Met police had extensive evidence of phone hacking from investigator Glenn Mulcaire’s files.

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Andy CoulsonDay 21 (Part 1):  Andy Coulson offered Clive Goodman “every possible support” after he was arrested for hacking into the voicemails of aides to the Royal family, the phone hacking trial heard today. Mr Coulson, then News of the World editor sympathised with Mr Goodman in  phone call on 8 November 2006. The call was  secretly taped by Mr Goodman.

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Charlie Brooks Will Lewis email exchange: Chris Bryant MP “making stuff up”

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This little gem from Peter Jukes comes from documents released in the hacking trial and shows the dislike in the Murdoch Empire for Chris Bryant having the temerity to suggest they could have been. involved in phone hacking. Note BBC Panorama being ” hit” by two legal letters and the determination that Rebekah Brooks must be protected from any suggestion that phone hacking took place prior to 2005. ” We will not let this happen”says Will Lewis. No comment is necessary now.

peterjukes's avatarThe Criminal Media Nexus

Here’s the email exchange cited today in court between Rebekah Brooks‘ husband Charlie, and Will Lewis, formerly a senior executive at the Telegraph and then a senior News International executive.  It was prompted by questions raised in the House of Commons by the Labour MP Chris Bryant.

Will Lewis went on to run, under Lord Grabiner, the Management and Standards Committee, which provided evidence to the three MPS investigations – Operation Weeting, Elveden and Tuleta – as proof of co-operation with the police and compliance with US Department of Justice requirements under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Lewis is now a senior News Corp executive in New York.

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New year and a new defence for bloggers over defamatory comments

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The law offering a new defence and a remedy for bloggers besieged by defamatory comments from unknown sources will come into force on New Years Day 2014.
The regulations highlighted in a previous blog on this site have now been approved by both Houses of Parliament and will form the first move under the Defamation Act affecting websites.
The law will also set out a procedure on how complaints should be handled and also put an onus on the person complaining to explain what grounds they have for a complaint.
The changes on the law are outlined pretty comprehensively on the Inforrm blog which also includes a comment from a sceptical blogger about how useful they will be.
The new law was welcomed in the Lords. In a debate Lord Lester waxed lyrically about them. He said ” my noble friend Lord McNally [the Lib Dem government minister] is like Moses in the splendid portrait, bringing down the tables of the law to the Israelites, in seeking the approval of the House to the regulations what he is doing is important not only in this country but throughout Europe and in the wider world.”
Other peers admitted they knew nothing. Labour’s Lord Beecham said “when it comes to the world of computers, information technology and social media, I confess to being an utter novice. At risk of being labelled a Marxist by the right-wing press or Conservative Central Office, I recall some words of Marx—Groucho, I hasten to add, and not Karl. In one of his films, which might have been “A Night at the Opera” but I would not swear to that, he is seen poring over a map and declares that a child of five could understand the map. He continues: “Bring me a child of five”. I am tempted to make the same request when confronted by matters of the kind encompassed by these regulations.”
At least one peer was honest!