Quote:News International 'continued to pay Neil Wallis after he joined Met'

Former deputy editor received £25,000 from News of the World publisher after starting work as consultant with police force

Lisa O'Carroll guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 September 2011 19.29 BST Article history

The relationship between the police and the News of the World has come under fire again amid revelations that Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of the News of the World, was paid by the paper's publisher for "crime exclusives" while working for the Metropolitan police.

Wallis was secretly paid more than £25,000 by News International after he left the paper and got a contract to work two days a month as a PR consultant with the Met. One story earned him a single payment of £10,000.

The Daily Telegraph claims that internal records obtained by Scotland Yard show that he was paid for providing News International with details of a suspected assassination attempt on the Pope during his visit to the UK last year.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said the contract it had with Wallis's PR firm, Chamy Media, "had a confidentiality clause, a data protection act clause and a conflict of interest clause within it".

He added that Wallis did not have access to the Met's IT systems.

The revelations that Wallis received money from News International while working for Scotland Yard will raise questions about conflicts of interest.

Last month, it emerged that Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World, continued to receive payments from News International as part of a severance deal after he was employed by the Tory party as its director of communications.

Wallis's solicitor has made a complaint alleging that the police had leaked the information regarding the payments.

Quote:Wallis's solicitor has made a complaint alleging that the police had leaked the information regarding the payments.

Former journalist says colleagues at Mirror Group newspaper hacked phones

A former journalist at the national tabloid newspaper The People has claimed phone hacking was rife among his colleagues and was covered by up senior executives.

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Quote:News of the World hired investigators to spy on hacking victims' lawyers

Exclusive: Investigators followed and filmed lawyers of hacking victims in apparent bid to gather material on their private lives

Nick Davies guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 November 2011 15.41 GMT

The News of the World hired a specialist private investigator to run covert surveillance on two of the lawyers representing phone-hacking victims as part of an operation to put pressure on them to stop their work.

The investigator secretly videoed Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris as well as family members and associates. Evidence suggests this was part of an attempt to gather evidence for false smears about their private lives.

The News of the World also took specialist advice in an attempt to injunct Lewis to prevent him representing the victims of hacking and attempted to persuade one of his former clients to sue him.

The surveillance of Lewis and Harris occurred during the past 18 months, when Rupert Murdoch's son James was executive chairman of the paper's parent company, News International.

He is due to give a second round of evidence to a House of Commons select committee on Thursday and is likely to face intense questioning about the quality of his leadership.

Neither lawyer would comment but friends say they are furious at what they see as an attempt at "blackmail" and are considering suing the News of the World for breach of privacy. They have previously had to reassure clients that their private lives would not be exposed if they dared to sue the paper.

Lewis and Harris have been part of a small group of lawyers who have mounted a series of devastating legal actions against News International. Separately, they represented Gordon Taylor and Max Clifford, the first two hacking victims to sue the company for hacking their phones.

Harris also acts for football agent Sky Andrew, whose case led in January to the resignation of the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson. Lewis also represents the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose case led to the closure of the News of the World in July.

Emerging evidence suggests they were targeted on at least two occasions by Derek Webb, an investigator who specialises in physically following people and in making secret videos of their movements. Webb has worked for the News of the World since 2003, following hundreds of targets including members of the royal family and serving cabinet ministers.

Emails that have been recovered by Scotland Yard disclose the names of those working for News International who hatched the plans.

Webb was tasked as part of an attempt to prove a false claim that Harris was having an affair with a Manchester solicitor and other false claims about the private life of Charlotte Harris and her children. It is not yet clear exactly how the News of the World would have used the information if any claim had proved to be true.

In the spring of 2010, following a hostile report by the Commons media select committee, the News of the World hired Webb to gather evidence on Lewis. For reasons which are not yet clear, he focused on Lewis's former wife and secretly filmed her home in Manchester, following her and making further video of and her daughter as they visited local shops and a garden centre.

In January 2011, Webb was hired to spy on Harris. This was at a time when the case of her client Sky Andrew had uncovered information which led to the sacking of the paper's news editor, Ian Edmondson.

Webb was tasked to find evidence that she was having an affair with a Manchester solicitor. The allegation was false; Harris had never met the solicitor in question.

Other investigators also were hired to supply reports on the two lawyers, although it is not clear who commissioned them. One of the reports which has been seen by the Guardian, clearly suggests that somebody had been following Harris and her two young children.

In evidence to the media select committee in September, the News of the World's in-house lawyer, Tom Crone, was asked by the Labour MP Tom Watson if he had seen dossiers on the private lives of claimant lawyers. Crone said: "I saw one thing in relation to two of the lawyers, except I do not know whether it was a dossier. It involves their private lives."

He suggested that he could not name those who had commissioned this work without interfering with current police inquiries. Separately, according to internal emails recovered by Scotland Yard, the News of the World commissioned a senior barrister to advise on whether they could injunct Lewis to stop him working for any alleged victim of phone hacking on the grounds that he had confidential information from his work for Gordon Taylor.

The newspaper's solicitors, Farrer and Co, wrote to Lewis threatening to injunct him if he took on any hacking clients but took no action when Lewis ignored the threat.

The internal emails also reveal that the newspaper's lawyers tried to approach solicitors acting for Lewis's former client Gordon Taylor to see if they could persuade him to sue Lewis. This also failed, and Lewis has gone on to represent several dozen clients who are suing the News of the World for their alleged role in hacking their phones.

Webb is now also in dispute with the newspaper and has sought the help of the National Union of Journalists to pursue a claim that the News of the World failed to honour an agreement to give him a loyalty payment after the paper closed in July.

Webb is known to have followed members of the royal family, often on instructions from the former royal correspondent Clive Goodman, who was jailed in January 2007 for intercepting the voicemail of three members of the royal household.

Webb, who is a former police officer, also followed cabinet ministers, including John Prescott when he was deputy prime minister and Charles Clarke, the former home secretary.

The newspaper continued to hire him even after the phone-hacking scandal broke and he is known to have been following a leading trade unionist shortly before the paper closed.

In November 2008, Webb was cleared of aiding and abetting misconduct in public office in a controversial case in which Thames Valley police arrested a local newspaper journalist, Sally Murrer, and tried to have her prosecuted for receiving information from a police officer.

Physical surveillance is not normally seen as a criminal offence but it is possible that Webb's targets might sue for breach of privacy.

News Corp Accused Of Trying To Bribe Former Australian Senator

Magda Hassan Wrote:Starting at page 41 there is some interesting testimony from Ian Hurst who is a former Force Research Unit soldier active during the Northern Ireland troubles. He gave evidence today at Leveson on media computer hacking. His testimony is not being reported by the media surprise surprise. However, his startling testimony regards the association of Andy Coulson with senior figures in the Metropolitan Police Service and the extremely high degree of corruption in the latter. At around page 61 there is testimony from the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain. He had his computer hacked by the NOW at the time he was in office. That's espionage. Why aren't the security services all over it? Or are they but in another capacity.....
http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/transcript-of-Morning-Hearing-28-November-20111.txt

Huge hat tip to the gorgeous DavGuy. :humble:

Quote:James Murdoch: I didn't read crucial phone-hacking email

News International boss was sent email in 2008 showing practice went beyond rogue reporter

Dan Sabbagh and Mark Sweney guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 December 2011 21.50 GMT

Fresh questions about the extent of James Murdoch's knowledge of the phone-hacking scandal were raised on Tuesday when it emerged he received an email that included a briefing indicating that the activity had not been confined to a single "rogue reporter".

News International's executive chairman wrote to MPs to say he had not properly read the June 7 2008 mail from News of the World editor Colin Myler which forwarded an account of the case being brought against the paper by the Professional Footballers' Association boss Gordon Taylor

The email chain appears to contradict Murdoch's insistence that he was not briefed in detail on the case which was later settled for more than £700,000.

The forwarded note from the paper's legal manager Tom Crone warned of a "nightmare scenario" because Taylor had obtained firm evidence of the hacking of one of his colleague's phones which involved at least one other News of the World journalist.

Myler's email also contained a second warning, from another lawyer retained by the News of the World, which added that Taylor's legal team wanted to demonstrate that phone hacking was "rife" throughout News International, the British parent company of the red top title.

Murdoch replied to the revealing email within three minutes of it being sent to him but insisted on the day the email chain was made public by the culture and media committee for the first time that he had only read the top of the email, not the email chain below.

Writing to MPs, Murdoch said: "I am confident that I did not review the full email chain at the time or afterwards," in part because Myler's note had been sent to him at the weekend.

Crone's forwarded note places pressure on Murdoch's account of his handling of the hacking affair because it refers to the email which became known as the "For Neville" mail, a key piece of evidence that showed hacking extended beyond a single rogue reporter.

Murdoch has always insisted he was not told about the existence of the "For Neville" email.

Crone and Myler have repeatedly told MPs that they briefed Murdoch about the email referred to in the newly-released emails as "the Ross Hindley email" in reference to the reporter who had transcribed hacked voicemails allegedly intended for the paper's chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck.

Three days after Myler sent the note that Murdoch says he did not read in full, the News Corp boss met the editor and Crone on 10 June 2008 to agree to settle the case in secret. News Corp, however, continued to maintain publicly that hacking was confined to a single "rogue reporter" until the end of 2010.

That "rogue reporter" was Clive Goodman who was jailed in 2007, for his part in hacking into phones belonging to officials working for Prince William and Prince Harry. Accounts of the 10 June meeting have been disputed for several months, with Murdoch telling parliament in July and November that he did not see the "For Neville" email, nor did he understand its significance.

Myler and Crone have repeatedly disputed Murdoch's account, saying the "For Neville" email was the sole reason for settling the case. The Murdoch disclosure came on the same day that Crone told the Leveson inquiry into press standards that he had always suspected phone hacking at the paper went beyond a single journalist, saying that he believed that the "rogue reporter" line was "erroneous from the outset".

Elsewhere, in the high court, a lawyer acting for Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was jailed for hacking phones for the News of the World, said his client had told Crone in 2007 that he was also instructed by another journalist, Ian Edmondson, the title's former news editor, to intercept voicemail messages.

The email chain forwarded to Murdoch by Myler also includes a note from Julian Pike, News International's external legal adviser at the firm Farrer's dated 6 June 2008. Pike says that Taylor's lawyer, Mark Lewis, has told him that he wants to demonstrate that hacking "is/was rife throughout the organisation" and he wants to "correct" the News International line that Goodman was a "rogue trader".

Crone commented on that note from Pike a day later, suggesting to Myler that "the best course of action" is to make a settlement offer to Taylor which would "amount to £700k [thousand]".

The two emails, were in turn, forwarded by Myler to Murdoch at 2.31pm on 7 June 2008, a Saturday. In a short email the then News of the World editor concludes that the status of phone-hacking case "is as bad as we feared". Myler asks for a meeting with his superior on Tuesday to discuss.

Murdoch acknowledged Myler's email almost immediately, responding at 2.34pm. "No worries," it began. "I am in during the afternoon. If you want to talk before I'll be home tonight after seven and most of the day tomorrow."

The email correspondence has come to light after it was unearthed by News Corp's in-house management and standards committee this month, which is working with the police and other outside bodies investigating claims of phone hacking against the News of the World. Linklaters, the law firm to the committee, passed the email chain to both Murdoch himself and the culture media and sport select committee.

Murdoch was first asked about the "For Neville" email when he appeared before MPs on the culture media and sport select committee with his father on 19 July of this year. He was asked by Tom Watson : "When you signed off the Taylor payment, did you see or were you made aware of the 'For Neville' email, the transcript of the hacked voicemail messages?" and replied: "No, I was not aware of that at the time."

In September, Myler and Crone, appearing together before the same group of MPs, said they had told Murdoch about the "For Neville email" in 2008. Murdoch was subsequently recalled by the MPs and insisted he had not been made aware that there was any evidence that hacking was more widespread than a single reporter.

In a statement, Murdoch said: "I was sent the email [from Colin Myler] on a Saturday when I was not in the office. I replied two minutes later accepting a meeting and did not read the full email chain. As I have always said, I was not aware of evidence of widespread wrongdoing or the need for further investigation."

Quote:News of the World surveillance of detective: what Rebekah Brooks knew

Brooks summoned to meeting with Scotland Yard to be told her journalists had spied on behalf of murder suspects


Nick Davies
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 July 2011 19.47 BST

As editor of the News of the World Rebekah Brooks was confronted with evidence that her paper's resources had been used on behalf of two murder suspects to spy on the senior detective who was investigating their alleged crime.

Brooks was summoned to a meeting at Scotland Yard where she was told that one of her most senior journalists, Alex Marunchak, had apparently agreed to use photographers and vans leased to the paper to run surveillance on behalf of Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery, two private investigators who were suspected of murdering another investigator, Daniel Morgan, when the latter was a partner of Rees's in the firm Southern Investigations. The Yard saw this as a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice.

Brooks was also told of evidence that Marunchak had a corrupt relationship with Rees, who had been earning up to £150,000 a year selling confidential data to the News of the World. Police told her that a former employee of Rees had given them a statement alleging that some of these payments were diverted to Marunchak, who had been able to pay off his credit card and pay his child's private school fees.

A Guardian investigation suggests that surveillance of Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook involved the News of the World physically following him and his young children, "blagging" his personal details from police databases, attempting to access his voicemail and that of his wife, and possibly sending a "Trojan horse" email in an attempt to steal information from his computer.

The targeting of Cook began following his appearance on BBC Crimewatch on 26 June 2002, when he appealed for information to solve the murder of Morgan, who had been found dead in south London 15 years earlier. Rees and Fillery were among the suspects. The following day, Cook was warned by the Yard that they had picked up intelligence that Fillery had been in touch with Marunchak and that Marunchak agreed to "sort Cook out".

A few days later, Cook was contacted by Surrey police, where he had worked as a senior detective from 1996 to 2001, and was told that somebody claiming to work for the Inland Revenue had contacted their finance department, asking for Cook's home address so that they could send him a cheque with a tax refund. The finance department had been suspicious and refused to give out the information.

It is now known that at that time, the News of the World's investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, succeeded in obtaining Cook's home address, his internal payroll number at the Metropolitan police, his date of birth and figures for the amount that he and his wife were paying for their mortgage. All of this appears to have been blagged by Mulcaire from confidential databases, apparently including the Met's own records.

Mulcaire obtained the mobile phone number for Cook's wife and the password she used for her mobile phone account.

Paperwork in the possession of the Yard's Operation Weeting is believed to show that Mulcaire did this on the instructions of Greg Miskiw, the paper's assistant editor and a close friend of Marunchak.

About a week later, a van was seen parked outside Cook's home. The following day, two vans were seen there. Both of them attempted to follow Cook as he took his two-year-old son to nursery. Cook alerted Scotland Yard, who sent a uniformed officer to stop one of the vans on the grounds that its rear brake light was broken. The driver proved to be a photojournalist working for the News of the World. Both vans were leased to the paper. During the same week, there were signs of an attempt to open letters which had been left in Cook's external postbox.

Scotland Yard chose not to mount a formal inquiry. Instead a senior press officer contacted Brooks to ask for an explanation. She is understood to have told them they were investigating a report that Cook was having an affair with another officer, Jacqui Hames, the presenter of BBC Crimewatch. Yard sources say they rejected this explanation, because Cook had been married to Hames for some years; the couple had two children, then aged two and five; and they had previously appeared together as a married couple in published stories."The story was complete rubbish," according to one source.

For four months, the Yard took no action, raising questions about whether they were willing to pursue what appeared to be an attempt to interfere with a murder inquiry. However, in November 2002, at a press social event at Scotland Yard, Brooks was asked to come into a side room for a meeting. She was confronted by Cook, his boss, Commander Andre Baker, and Dick Fedorcio, the head of media relations. According to a Yard source, Cook described the surveillance on his home and the apparent involvement of Marunchak, and evidence of Marunchak's suspect financial relationship with Rees. Brooks is said to have defended Marunchak on the grounds that he did his job well.

Scotland Yard took no further action, apparently reflecting the desire of Fedorcio, who has had a close working relationship with Brooks, to avoid unnecessary friction with the News of the World. In March Marunchak was named by BBC Panorama as the News of the World executive who hired a specialist to plant a Trojan on the computer of a former British intelligence officer, Ian Hurst.

Rees and Fillery were eventually arrested and charged in relation to the murder of Morgan. Charges against both men were later dropped, although Rees was convicted of plotting to plant cocaine on a woman so that her ex-husband would get custody of their children, and Fillery was convicted of possessing indecent images of children.

Cook and his wife are believed to be preparing a legal action against the News of the World, Marunchak, Miskiw and Mulcaire. Operation Weeting is also understood to be investigating.

This article was amended on 8 July 2011. Wording in the original suggested that at the time Daniel Morgan was murdered, Sid Fillery was among his partners in a private investigations firm. This has been corrected.

Quote:Former Scotland Yard officer arrested as part of press leaks investigation

DCS Dave Cook questioned on suspicion of misconduct in a public office resulting from information gained from Operation Elveden

Sandra Laville
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 January 2012 21.19 GMT

A former Scotland Yard officer has been arrested by the Independent Police Complaints Commission over allegations of unauthorised leaks to a journalist.

DCS Dave Cook, 52, is being questioned on suspicion of misconduct in a public office after being detained at his Berkshire home on Tuesday morning.

He was arrested after the IPCC was passed information in mid-December by Metropolitan police detectives working on Operation Elveden, which is investigating alleged payments to police officers by newspapers.

Investigators working for the police watchdog have powers of arrest when carrying out an independent investigation. It is not clear why the Met did not carry out the arrest and instead passed the inquiry on to the police watchdog. A spokesman for the Met would not comment.

Cook has complained he was a victim of the News of the World when he was followed during his investigation into the murder of Daniel Morgan. He now becomes a potential victim of one police inquiry - Weeting and a suspect in another - Elveden.

Cook was criticised by the judge in the Morgan murder trial for misbehaviour in the way he handled a key supergrass witness. He was accused of allegedly coaching the supergrass, in order that his lies were not discovered.

The move comes as the Met adopts a new policy towards the media that threatens officers who maintain informal contacts with journalists, and who pass on information that is not authorised, with arrest and disciplinary action.

The new policy, outlined by Elizabeth Filkin, the former parliamentary commissioner for standards, in her report last week encourages the Met to take a tough stance against officers who leak information to journalists. Filkin said the tougher action against unauthorised leaks was part of a policy of openness and transparency. She also called for whistleblowing to be a rarity so that the Met can protect its image and reputation.

A spokeswoman for the IPCC said: "A 52-year-old man, a former Met officer, was arrested by the IPCC at his home in Berkshire this morning on suspicion of misconduct in public office and Data Protection Act offences. The arrest is the result of information passed to the IPCC by the Met team investigating Operation Elveden and relates to the alleged passing of unauthorised information to a journalist."

Nine suspects have been arrested as part of Operation Elveden, which was launched after officers were handed documents suggesting News International journalists had made payments to officers.