Quote:Tom Watson MP, former News of the World editor Alex Marunchak, and the murder of Daniel Morgan

Anatomy of a Denial

Radio Four has recently been running a (at times moving, at times irritating) series on people who were intending to use the leap day of 2012 February 29 to do something special. Tom Watson MP decided to use this day (and parliamentary privilege) to relate some of the background to a brutal murder, the police corruption that has thus far thwarted any attempts to bring the killer/s to justice, and the curious role of News International in this sorry tale.

An important role in this story is played by an Alex Marunchak, former chief crime reporter for the News of the World and later the paper's Irish editor, and Tom Watson made (or reported) a number of accusations against this journalist.

Tom Watson:

Quote:The main conduit [for information obtained through Rees and Fillery's corrupted contacts] at News International was Alex Marunchak, chief crime reporter for the News of the World and later the paper's Irish editor. I want to focus the Minister's attention on Marunchak in particular. Rees and Marunchak had a relationship that was so close that they both registered companies at the same address in Thornton Heath. Abbeycover, established by Rees and his colleague from News International, Greg Miskiw, was registered at the same address as Southern Investigations, run by Rees and Fillery. Rees's confirmed links with Marunchak take the murder of Daniel Morgan to a new level.

It is important to remember that, in the days before the murder, Daniel's family believe that he was on the verge of exposing huge police corruption. That was confirmed by Brian Madagan, Daniel's former employer, in a statement in May 1987, in which he said that he believed Daniel was about to sell a story to a newspaper. In a second, later statement, Madagan said he believed that paper to be the News of the World and the contact to be Alex Marunchak who, until recently, still worked for the paper. BBC Radio 4's "Report" programme also confirmed that it has seen evidence suggesting that, a week before the murder, Daniel was about to take a story exposing police corruption to Mr Marunchak and was promised a payment of £40,000. We also know, from the investigative reporting of Nick Davies at The Guardian that Southern Investigations paid the debts of Alex Marunchak.

As part of the third failed investigation, Operation Nigeria was launched. It included the surveillance of Southern Investigations between May and September 1999 and was run by the Metropolitan police's anti-corruption squad, CIB3. It placed a bug in the offices of Southern Investigations that yielded evidence that convicted Rees for a serious and unrelated crime. Police surveillance shows frequent contact between Rees and Marunchak. I understand that the tapes made by the recording by the bug have not all been transcribed; if they were, they would yield more collusion, perhaps criminal in nature, between News International and Jonathan Rees. I hope the Minister will ask the police if that process is under way.

When Rees came out of jail, he was re-hired by the News of the World, then edited by Andy Coulson. Rees also founded a company called Pure Energy, in which Marunchak was involved. The police hold evidence to suggest that Rees discussed the use of Trojan devices with his associate, Sid Fillery. He was an associate of Philip Campbell Smith, who received a custodial sentence on Monday for a crime related to blagging. Campbell Smith is a former Army intelligence officer. I will say no more on Campbell Smith, because I do not want to prejudice the Operation Tuleta inquiry. However, I hope that I have demonstrated to the Minister a close association between Rees and Marunchak.

This is why I think that the Metropolitan police cannot be used in any further investigations: yesterday, the Leveson inquiry heard a startling revelation that Alex Marunchak a close business associate of Jonathan Rees, then the prime suspect in a murder case chose to put DCI David Cook and his family under close covert surveillance. The person who was investigating a murder was put under close surveillance by a close business associate of the man he was investigating. That was raised with Rebekah Brooks in 2002, the then editor of the News of the World. I would like the Minister to imagine what his response would have been to that information. A journalist employee tried to undermine the murder investigation of his close associate. Rupert Murdoch claims that News International takes a zero-tolerance approach to wrongdoing. However, far from launching a wide-scale inquiry to investigate wrongdoing, Rebekah Brooks promoted Alex Marunchak to the editor's job at the News of the World in Ireland.

[…..]

It gets worse. I would like the Minster to request to see all the intelligence reports submitted about Alex Marunchak. I believe the Met is sitting on an intelligence report from late 2002 that claims a police contact overheard Marunchak claim he was paying the relatives of police officers in Cambridgeshire for information about the Soham murders. As far as we know, those allegations have not been investigated. I do not know whether the intelligence reports are accurate, but I do know that Alex Marunchak was involved in writing stories about how the Manchester United tops of those young girls were found. I also believe that at least one of the Soham parents appears in the evidence file of Glenn Mulcaire. The Met police failed to investigate both leads when reported in 2002 and 2006. I think that Rupert Murdoch owes the Morgan family an apology, and I do not think that he has made his last apology to the grieving parents of murdered children.

Alex Marunchak has just responded to these allegations.

Alex Marunchak

Quote: Mercifully I didn't see Tom Watson's performance but regret it came slightly too late for him to be an also-ran at the Oscar ceremony.

It astonishes me an MP can abuse parliamentary privilege and waste everybody's time by peddling untruths in this way.

I have never met Watson, nor talked or communicated with him in any way.

Perhaps I should make this clear at the outset lest he be found crucified on a hill overlooking Jerusalem and I am held, in some way, to be responsible.

It is noteworthy that Maranchak's opening remarks are ad hominem rather than ad argumentum and that Maranchak begins by denying a "straw man" the unalleged "he met Watson" and "he communicated with Watson".

Quote: Watson's comments about my professional dealings with murder victim Daniel Morgan are absolutely untrue.

I do not doubt that Morgan's family now believe he was on the verge of exposing police corruption before he died.

If that was indeed a motive for his death then I know nothing about it.
The reason is that I never heard of Daniel Morgan or Southern Investigations until after his murder.

He never phoned me, contacted or met me, neither directly nor through a third party, by telephone or letter or by any other method.

Nor did he leave graffiti sprayed on walls for me to spot on the way to work which asked me to contact him.

But, I admit, for all I know, he may even have employed someone claiming to have ESP powers to contact me.

Sadly, for Mr Watson, I did not receive any ESP messages either.

Perhaps he should look into this as the basis for his next parliamentary diatribe on the topic?

I was told to cover the Morgan murder story as the News of the World's crime reporter.Then news editor Bob Warren told me: "Find out who this man is for a start. We've never heard of him."

Neither I, nor anyone else at the News of the World, offered Morgan £40,000 for his story.

Nor did we offer £100,000.

In fact we never knew he even existed prior to his murder.

More ad hominem attacks on Tom Watson, though the man who made this particular allegation is Brian Madigan. Maranchak nevertheless offers two categorical denials here: that he had never heard of Daniel Morgan until after the 1987 murder and that he had never heard of or Southern Investigations until after the murder. I rather think these denials (especially the second) should be checked.

Quote: I was promoted to associate editor of the News of the World in 1997 after 10 years on the News of the World newsdesk.

My primary job was to edit the Irish News of the World in Dublin.

[…]

I never worked on stories about the Soham murders [which happened in 2002], never wrote copy, nor interviewed anyone.

I did not pay any relatives of police officers involved in the Soham murders.
Instead, I carried on with the task of editing the Irish News of the World and commuted between Dublin and London.

Watson said in parliament he had been told a police informant claimed he overheard me boasting I had paid relatives of police officers in Cambridgeshire for information about the Soham murders. He also claimed I had written Soham stories. For the avoidance of any doubt - what Watson said is completely untrue.

In the unlikely event an experienced Fleet Street hack like myself, based in Dublin, were paying relatives of police officers in Cambridgeshire, would he be stupid enough to blurt it out in front of strangers, one of whom was a police informer? Er, no. I don't think so.

The simple fact is that I was not involved in the Soham story. It was an English story run by the London newsdesk. I was in charge of the Irish News of the World and had no role whatsoever in the Soham story.

Another categorical denial here: that Maranchak had "no role whatsoever in the Soham story". The Telegraph says that there is a News of the World article about the case which had Mr Marunchak's byline on it. Again, this ought to be checkable. There is also an appeal to the argument from personal incredulity: "would be stupid enough to blurt it out in front of strangers?". A problem here is that all our thresholds for incredulity have been raised considerably by the revelations coming out on a daily basis.

Quote: I received information from a source that then minor BBC Crimewatch personality Jacqui Hames was having an affair with a senior officer who was appearing on her TV show.

For the avoidance of doubt, I did nothing to check this, because it was of no interest to me.

I did not look at cuttings, because I had no time, and I was editing the Irish News of the World. But I passed the tittle-tattle on to the London newsdesk as a bit of gossip, which had been passed on to me, and left it to them to deal with as they saw fit.

I do not know to this day what checks they carried out, if any at all, or indeed if they did anything about the information. Nor did I ask them to keep me posted with progress or developments. End of story.

But I do know that I did nothing more than have a 30 second conversation passing on the rumour to the London newsdesk and that was the end of my involvement.

This would appear to be a refutation of the claim that Marunchak put DCI David Cook and his family under surveillance though it is noteworthy that there is no explicit denial of this core allegation.

Quote:As part of my master-plan to escape Fleet Street and become a multi-millionaire I registered a limited company at Companies House in London through a chartered accountant. I believe he registered numerous companies at the same address which is the office from which he worked and rented. My name and home address was readily available from Companies House records.

The master plan was to import vodka into Britain and become so incredibly wealthy I could afford to stick two fingers up at Fleet Street. Sadly, the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry, and the vodka company never traded. Not once. It did not take one single penny, nor import a single drop of vodka, let alone a whole bottle-full.

Instead, I was so busy carrying out my work for the paper I never had time to turn my attention to anything else. After a couple of years on the shelf and not trading I had the firm wound up after receiving threatening letters from Companies House for not filing accounts of which there were none to file.

Now the reference to importing alcohol is interesting because (as reported here) one "Barry Beardall" (who was employed by the Sunday Times to trick staff at a law firm into revealing details from Gordon Brown's personal file, who met Jonathan Rees in prison, and who became a partner with Rees in a company that employed Marunchak as a consultant) was (when he met Rees) serving six and a half years for a £7 million alcohol smuggling operation. Of course this may be pure coincidence, but it is a coincidence that should perhaps be set alongside the other coincidence reported here: that Marunchak's chartered accountant registered Marunchak's firm at the same address as Jonathan Rees's Southern Investigations firm.

Quote: I have a signed, witnessed, dated statement of truth from the then bursar of the school attended by my sons that no one except myself ever paid school fees. These were gratefully received because they were never paid on time or in full.

Eventually these were finally settle in total after I had left the employ of the News of the World and only after the threat of legal action against me and two years after my youngest son finished university. That's five years after he left the school.

But should anyone be interested, then I am happy to give tips to anyone interested in knowing how I managed to achieve this incredible feat and avoid paying school fees for so long. Ditto for my credit cards.

My response to Watson's childish and infantile accusations, which have no basis in fact whatsoever, have been repeated ad infinitum whenever he mischievously makes them.But he persists in doing so, for whatever motives he has conjured up for himself. After all, he didn't get to where he is on the Labour back benches by being stupid.

More ad hominem attacks on Tom Watson though the source of these financial allegations is actually Guardian reporter Nick Davis. One assumes that a police trawl of Mr Marunchak's bank accounts might shed some light here.

Of course, what is often the most interesting is not what people accused of wrong-doing deny, but what they don't deny.

What Marunchak does not deny (in this most recent set of denials) is that he knew (personally) and employed (as a source for information) and was a business partner of Jonathon Rees
It is interesting to contrast the recent denials with what he said back in March 2011:

Quote: Panorama: In 2006, whilst you were employed as a senior executive editor at the News of the World, you commissioned further research from Jonathan Rees (who had previously run "Southern Investigations"), notwithstanding the fact that he had recently been released from a seven-year prison sentence following his conviction for a serious criminal offence.

Marunchak: This is untrue. Information offered and brought in by sources of their own volition is not the same thing as being commissioned to obtain it in the first place. The conviction and sentence to which you refer, as I understand it, is currently being examined by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which was set up by the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice to assess if convictions should be referred to the Court of Appeal for reconsideration on the grounds the original conviction was unsafe.

Here Marunchak seems to be saying that though he received (and presumably paid for) information from Rees, he did not ask Rees for information and that Rees may, in any case, have not been guilty of the offence for which he was imprisoned. I think it is noteworthy that Marunchak makes no attempt to repeat these justifications in his more recent pronouncements.

So, to summarize, there is no new evidence here or anything that proves that Marunchak is actually guilty of any criminal wrongdoing, but there is a great deal to suggest that the authorities should now subject Marunchak's account to a great deal more detailed scrutiny than they have so far.

Forget #horsegate; forget hacking celebrities' phones, someone has got away with murder here and the allegations need to be fully and rigorously investigated.

Meanwhile, Tom Watson MP is to be commended for his role in bringing this matter to public attention.

Quote:Leveson inquiry: Sir Paul Stephenson's meetings with Neil Wallis

Former Met chief met ex-News of the World deputy editor eight times between 2006 and 2010, more than any other journalist

Dan Sabbagh
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 March 2012 15.22 GMT

The former Met commissioner described Neil Wallis as a "light acquaintance" today when giving evidence at the Leveson Inquiry. He dined or met with Wallis on eight separate occasions between 2006 and 2010, more than any other senior journalist or executive at any other newspaper. A list of those meetings based on the evidence given today, follows, sometimes with comments from Sir Paul or the barrister questioning him, Robert Jay QC.


Sir Paul Stephenson joined the Met as deputy commissioner on 16 March 2005. Wallis was deputy editor of the News of the World. Glenn Mulcaire was arrested on 8 August 2006 in the first phone-hacking investigation (he was later jailed for four months in January 2007). Information circulated around News International about the scale of the hacking inquiry from 15 September 2006, as shown by an email sent to Andy Coulson, Wallis's boss.


1. 19 September 2006: Dinner with Wallis and Dick Fedorcio, head of press for the Met police. Noted in the Met's hospitality register, meaning it would have been paid for by Wallis.

2. 15 November 2007: Dinner with Wallis and Fedorcio. Robert Jay QC: "Presumably a similar purpose as the dinner the previous year or 14 months previously; is that right?" Stephenson: "It would be, yes."

3. 20 February 2008: The "first entry" that year is dinner with Neil Wallis alone. Stephenson says "I don't recall that [dinner]. I don't recall having dinner with Mr Wallis alone. It is possible, but I don't recall it."

4. 15 October 2008: Meeting and drinks with Wallis and Fedorcio. Noted in the Met's hospitality register "as informal meeting, drinks provided, deputy editor News of the World".

Stephenson becomes acting commissioner on 1 December 2008; he is appointed as commissioner on 28 January 2009.

5. 4 February 2009: Drinks with Wallis and Fedorcio, described as a "business dinner" in the Met police register. Jay: "But again you're not going to be able to assist with what was discussed on that occasion, presumably?" Stephenson: "No."

6. 23 June 2009: Dinner with Wallis and Fedorcio at Luciano's in St James' Street. Jay: "Do you recall anything about that occasion?" Stephenson: "I don't specifically recall the occasion, but if it's there in the diary and the register, then I accept that it took place."

Neil Wallis left the NoW in August 2009 and set up his own consultancy, Chamy Media. He worked as a two-day-a-week PR adviser to the Met between October 2009 and September 2010, earning £24,000, before joining Outside Organisation, a public relations company, in 2010. Stephenson says he was not involved in Wallis's recruitment in 2009, but says he was content with it.

7. 10 December 2010: Dinner with Fedorcio, Yates and Wallis. Described in the Met police register as a private dinner but "no expenses claimed".

8. April 2010: Drinks with Wallis and Fedorcio. Listed in Stephenson's diary as "no expenses claimed". Dinner or drinks at the bbar on the Buckingham Palace Road.

Wallis was arrested on suspicion of involvement in phone hacking 14 July 2011. Stephenson resigned on 17 July 2011.


Other meetings between Sir Paul Stephenson and News International listed today:

2008

28 April: Dinner with Dominic Mohan of the Sun.

22 October: Dinner with Colin Myler and Fedorcio. In the Met hospitality register, so paid for by the News of the World.

2009

20 April: Lunch with Rebekah Wade editor of the Sun, in Wapping.

28 April: Lunch with John Witherow, editor of the Sunday Times.

14 May: Dinner with Myler and Fedorcio.

17 June: News Corp reception at Oxo tower.

2010

19 April: Lunch with Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International.

23 November: Met Mohan, now editor of the Sun

Quote:Phone-hacking documents 'confirm that Labour government was briefed'

Leveson inquiry told of Met briefing and internal memo after former home secretary denies he was told MPs were targeted

David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 March 2012 13.59 GMT

Documents have been discovered that apparently confirm police claims that the Labour government was secretly briefed about the significance of the phone-hacking arrests at the News of the World in 2006, the Leveson inquiry has been told.

Two Metropolitan police reports were sent to the Home Office on 9 August 2006, one of which was prepared for the home secretary, the inquiry heard when it resumed on Monday morning.

This followed the police discovery that Labour cabinet ministers were having their voicemail messages targeted. Both Tessa Jowell and John Prescott, at the time culture secretary and deputy prime minister, respectively, were known to have been targets.

One police report was handed over to Leveson over the weekend, and the second, written by Richard Riley, private secretary to the permanent secretary, "prepared by a senior civil servant for the home secretary personally" was being sought.

"It's obviously very important," Lord Justice Leveson told Neil Garnham QC, counsel representing the Met at the inquiry.

The existence of the reports appears to clash with claims by former home secretary John Reid to the Guardian at the weekend that he was never made aware that Labour MPs were being targeted by the News of the World.

He said on Friday evening: "I can categorically say that I did not receive any briefing from the Met suggesting that there was widespread hacking including MPs and the deputy PM."

Clarke told the inquiry under oath on Thursday: "I am absolutely clear in my mind that HM government was fully aware of this case at the time .... I recall discussing the case with Dr John Reid, the then home secretary, shortly after Goodman and Mulcaire had been arrested. This was in the margins of a meeting about broader counter-terrorism issues ... the Home Office had been informed of the arrests and the broad nature of the case that was alleged against Goodman and Mulcaire."

He was asked: "Did you make is clear to him that although the investigation had clearly and conclusively implicated Goodman and Mulcaire, (a) the range of victims was far wider than the royal household, and (b) that other journalists might well have been involved?"

He answered: "I think it did. I don't remember the exact content of that discussion. I know that a briefing paper went from the Metropolitan police to the Home Office and that Dr Reid was aware of it and it was on the basis of that that he asked me some questions."

Asked about police failure to brief Prescott that he was a hacking target, Clarke testified: "It wouldn't be for me to go direct to Lord Prescott. I discussed this with the then home secretary, Dr Reid. He was aware of the investigation."

Leveson also called on the police on Monday to find documentation about their dealings with Jowell. Sara Mansoori, the lawyer representing the "core participant" victims, raised the issue on behalf of the former culture secretary on Monday challenging police allegations that she had been unwilling to sign a witness statement to assist with the prosecution of News of the World journalists.

Jowell was the first cabinet minister who it was discovered was a News of the World target, prior to the arrest of private detective Glenn Mulcaire on 8 August 2006. Leveson asked for records to be found of which senior police officer visited Jowell at the time, to discuss possible prosecutions.

Quote:Yard chief ate with ex-deputy NoW editor after bid to halt Guardian story

Sir Paul Stephenson tried to persuade Alan Rusbridger to halt hacking investigation and then had dinner with Neil Wallis

David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 March 2012 19.12 GMT

The then commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir Paul Stephenson, dined with the former deputy editor of the News of the World hours after trying to persuade the Guardian to drop its investigation into phone hacking, it has emerged.

The Leveson inquiry into press standards was told that Neil Wallis, who was by that time on the payroll of the Met as a public relations adviser, was an acquaintance of Stephenson. Wallis was later to be arrested for questioning in connection with the hacking scandal.

The inquiry heard that Stephenson went on 10 December 2009 to see the Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, after being briefed by Assistant Commissioner John Yates that there was no new hacking evidence to investigate. Many believed the hacking allegations were politically motivated, Stephenson said, though he acknowledged he would have behaved differently had he been properly briefed.

After failing to dissuade Rusbridger, he went to dine with Wallis, Yates and the Met's public relations chief, Dick Fedorcio. The appointments diary recorded it as a private dinner, which Stephenson said was held "at a pub/restaurant that I frequented socially".

The Guardian editor was unaware that Stephenson knew Wallis, that he was planning to dine with him or that the Met was employing him. Rusbridger wrote asking for an explanation as to why he had not been told when the commissioner had expressed his "strong feeling" at the meeting that the Guardian's reporting was "over-egged and incorrect". He never got a reply.

Asked if he had been trying to persuade the Guardian to drop its coverage, Stephenson said: "No, I don't think I was." But he agreed: "There was very much a backcloth that this was about politics over substance."

He said: "I was being briefed that there was no good value in expending additional police resources" on the matter. Stephenson, who conceded he had not read the original Guardian articles, told Leveson: "I was only as good as the briefings I got."

Diary entries disclosed a pattern of socialising with Wallis similar to the meals in expensive restaurants with two other senior officers, Yates and Andy Hayman.

Between 2006 and 2010 Stephenson had eight meetings with Wallis, who was also at a Scotland Yard reception for Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor appointed as David Cameron's media adviser.

Restaurants visited included Luciano in St James's Street, on 23 June 2009, a few days before the Guardian broke its story alleging a News of the World hacking cover-up at a senior level.

Stephenson said he knew at the time that Wallis was a friend of Yates who went to football matches with him. Asked by Leveson whether he had not himself become a friend of Wallis, Stephenson said he regarded him more as a "light acquaintance".

Stephenson said he had first been introduced to Wallis as a deputy commissioner fresh from Lancashire at a dinner with Fedorcio on 19 September 2006.

This apparently cordial dinner took place despite a "tense standoff" between the News of the World and police, who had arrested Mulcaire and Goodman, and attempted to search the paper's premises on 8 August of that year. Police have told Leveson the paper's staff were completely unco-operative and officers had feared violence while inside the NoW offices.

The inquiry has heard that four days before Stephenson's first Wallis encounter, on 15 September 2006, an as yet unnamed senior police officer briefed Rebekah Brooks, the then Sun editor, assuring her that police were not planning to pursue any other News of the World journalists.

Magda Hassan Wrote:

Two UK Murdoch journalists in apparent suicide bids

By Georgina Prodhan | Reuters 11 hrs ago

• 
  

LONDON (Reuters) - Two senior journalists working for Rupert Murdoch's News International have apparently attempted suicide as pressure mounts at the scandal-hit publisher of the now-defunctNews of the World.

Three sources close to the company told Reuters on Tuesday the two journalists at the Sun daily appeared to have tried to take their own lives. Investigations sparked by a phone-hacking scandal continue to expose dubious practices by present and past employees.
Eleven current and former staff of the Sun, Britain's best-selling daily tabloid, have been arrested this year on suspicion of bribing police or civil servants for tip-offs.

Their arrests have come as a result of information provided to the police by the Management and Standards Committee (MSC), a body set up by parent company News Corp to facilitate police investigations and liaise with the courts.
The work of the MSC, which was set up to be independent of the conglomerate's British newspaper arm News International, has caused bitterness among staff, many of whom feel betrayed by an employer they have loyally served.
"People think that they've been thrown under a bus," one News International employee told Reuters. "They're beyond angry - there's an utter sense of betrayal, not just with the organisation but with a general lynch-mob hysteria."

Brooks held in phone-hacking probe

March 13, 2012 - 9:19PM

• Read later
  

Rebekah Brooks ... arrested. Photo: AFP

Rebekah Brooks and her racehorse trainer husband are among six suspects arrested today by detectives investigating phone hacking at News International.
The former News International chief executive and Charlie Brooks were arrested at their Oxfordshire home on Tuesday on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, sources said.
Police are searching several addresses after conducting dawn raids in London, Hampshire and Hertfordshire, Scotland Yard said.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Ms Brooks, a former editor of The Sun, had been on bail after being questioned by detectives last summer on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption.
Today's arrest come after her lawyer, Stephen Parkinson, said evidence given by Sue Akers at the Leveson Inquiry had brought much prejudicial material'' into the public domain.




Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/brooks-held-...z1ozcSiq9h