Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Magda Hassan]

Boris accused of 'political interference' in phone-hacking

Politics.co.uk 22 hours ago

By politics.co.uk staff

Boris Johnson has been accused of "political interference" in the police's phone-hacking investigation after saying officers should "move on".

Speaking to ITV's The Agenda programme last night, the mayor said: "Let's knock it on the head as fast as we can."

He then said too many officers are "tying up their time" on phone hacking and that he wants "the caravan to move on".

The comments prompted an angry letter from Joanne McCartney, Labour's policing lead on the London Assembly, to theMetropolitan Police commissioner, ensuring the operation would be unaffected by Mr Johnson's comments.

"This might be okay for other politicians who are close to News International and want to protect their friends, but the mayor is now in charge of the police force leading this case and when he comes out with this kind of stuff during live investigations he risks accusations of political interference," Ms McCartney said.

The mayor has previously branded the phone-hacking issue "a load of codswallop cooked up by the Labour party" and "patently politically motivated".

[Jan Klimkowski]

Boris accused of 'political interference' in phone-hacking

Boris Johnson has been accused of "political interference" in the police's phone-hacking investigation after saying officers should "move on".

Speaking to ITV's The Agenda programme last night, the mayor said: "Let's knock it on the head as fast as we can."

He then said too many officers are "tying up their time" on phone hacking and that he wants "the caravan to move on".

News Intl doubtless has a big fat file on Mayor Boris the Buffoon.

Whether the file stays in the cabinet or appears on the front page of a Murdoch organ will not depend purely on its newsworthiness.

The mayor has previously branded the phone-hacking issue "a load of codswallop cooked up by the Labour party" and "patently politically motivated".

So why did James Murdoch just resign as Chairman of News Intl?

Boris Johnson is patently not fit to exercise political control over Scotland Yard.

[Peter Lemkin]

The mayor has previously branded the phone-hacking issue "a load of codswallop cooked up by the Labour party" and "patently politically motivated".

So why did James Murdoch just resign as Chairman of News Intl?

Boris Johnson is patently not fit to exercise political control over Scotland Yard.

Oh, I'll guess that James will say he needed more time with his family or horse[s] and will be feeding both codswallop pie freshly made each day! As for Scotland Yard, my question would be are they fit to exercise control over themselves? More heads will surely roll..this is getting interesting.

[Jan Klimkowski]

More on the criminal corruption which sabotaged a murder investigation.

Tom Watson MP used Parliamentary Privilege to make incredibly serious allegations against former News Intl hack Alex Marunchak.

Private Investigator murdered for plan 'to expose police corruption'

Wednesday 29 February 2012 Channel 4 News
The brother of murdered private investigator Daniel Morgan tells Channel 4 News Morgan was killed because he was about to expose corruption in the police.


Daniel Morgan was found dead in a south London car park in 1987. His inquest ruled he had been unlawfully killed yet five separate police inquiries have failed to result in a conviction.

His brother Alastair Morgan told Channel 4 News he believes his brother was about to expose police corruption and that it was this which led to Daniel's murder: "What we know is that in the days before his murder, he said to a neighbour, 'you will never guess what I have found out today. All police are bastards'."

Asked if his brother was about to expose police corruption, he said: "The indications were there from the very beginning - at the time of the murder.

"Throughout the investigations that have taken place more recently, the evidence continues to suggest that is what happened. Police involvement with criminals, involvement with drugs and weapons importation."

Deal

Meanwhile, alleged links between the police and News International were further set out by MP Tom Watson at a Westminster Hall debate. Mr Watson alleged that in the week before his death, Daniel Morgan had brokered a deal to sell a story to the News of the World exposing police corruption and that his contact there was the paper's former crime editor Alex Marunchak.Mr Watson said the private detective was promised a payment of £40,000.

Echoing the family's demands, Mr Watson asked Police Minister Nick Herbert to launch a judicial inquiry into Mr Morgan's death. Mr Watson also used parliamentary privilege to set out what he said were links between Metropolitan Police detectives who were investigating Daniel Morgan's murder and Alex Marunchak.

Mr Marunchak has denied any links to Daniel Morgan or any allegations of wrongdoing.

Mr Watson also called on the government to investigate claims that the police has an intelligence file which suggests illegal payments were made to police investigating the Soham murders.

Judicial inquiry not ruled out

In response to Tom Watson's statement, Police Minister Nick Herbert said: "It is important to consider what options are now available to identify and address the issue of police corruption and to bring those responsible for Daniel's murder to justice.

"The Morgan family has called for a judicial inquiry and this call has been endorsed by the Metropolitan Police Authority."

He added: "We are considering very carefully if this is the right way forward. The home secretary and I haven't ruled out ordering a judicial inquiry at this stage."

But the minister also refused to rule out another investigation involving the police, something which the Morgan family have said it does not want as it has lost faith in the service.

Note that Marunchak has been accused of direct involvement in the hacking and bugging of an Irish Dirty War British intelligence asset turned whistleblower.

No wonder all that tosh about Rebekah Brooks and the police horse was deliberately leaked yesterday.

Magda - good cartoon though. :lol:

More on the murder, and more on Marunchak's many lives, from investigative journalist Nick Davies.

Police confronted Rebekah Brooks with evidence of crime

Published July 2011 Published by the Guardian
July 6 2011

As editor of the News of the World Rebekah Brooks was personally 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 notorious private investigators who were suspected of murdering their former partner, Daniel Morgan. 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 Jonathan 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 for his child's private school fees.

A Guardian investigation suggests that the surveillance of the senior murder squad officer, Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook, involved the News of the World in physically following him and his young children, blagging' his personal details from confidential 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 DCS Cook began following his appearance on BBC Crimewatch on June 26 2002, when he appealed for information to solve the murder of Daniel Morgan, who had been found dead in south London five years earlier. Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery were among the suspects.

The following day, Cook was warned by Scotland Yard that they had picked up intelligence that Fillery had been in touch with Alex Marunchak and that Marunchak had 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.

However, it is now known that at that time, the News of the World's fulltime 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 various confidential databases, apparently including the Met's own records.

In addition, Mulcaire obtained the mobile phone number for Cook's wife and the password she used for her mobile phone account, strongly suggesting that he was intent on hacking her voicemail, the offence for which he was jailed in January 2007.

Paperwork in the possession of Scotland Yard's Operation Weeting is believed to show that Mulcaire did this on the instructions of Greg Miskiw, then the paper's assistant editor for news and a close friend of Alex 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 break light was broken. The driver proved to be a photo journalist 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.

Confronted with evidence that their senior detective was being targeted by a newspaper acting on behalf of murder suspects, Scotland Yard chose not to mount a formal inquiry. Instead, the Guardian understands, a senior press officer contacted Rebekah Brooks to ask for an explanation. She is understood to have told them that 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 Jacqui 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, Rebekah Brooks was asked to come into a side room for a meeting.

There she was confronted by DCS Cook, his boss Commander Andre Baker and Dick Fedorcio, the head of media relations. According to a Yard source, Cook described to her in detail the surveillance on his home and the apparent involvement of Alex Marunchak, and also summarised the evidence of Marunchak's suspect financial relationship with Jonathan 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 Dick Fedorcio, who has had a close working relationship with Brooks, to avoid unnecessary friction with the News of the World.

Cook subsequently suspected that Trojan horse' emails may have been sent to his computer and to that of Daniel Morgan's brother, Alastair, although no confirmation was ever found. In March Alex Marunchak was named by BBC Panorama as the News of the World executive who hired a specialist to plan 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 Daniel 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.

DCS Cook and his wife are believed to be preparing a legal action against the News of the World, Alex Marunchek, Greg Miskiw and Glenn Mulcaire. Scotland Yard's Operation Weeting are also understood to be investigating.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Scotland Yard top brass frequently drank champagne and dined in exclusive London restaurants with Murdoch editors and reporters.

They claim this was all perfectly innocent.

Yates of the Yard, now Yates of Bahrain, claimed the dinners "were private and they were more likely to have discussed football than police matters".

In response to a News Intl email suggesting that a woman reporter who had "plied" Yates with champagne, should "call in" those favours, Yates responded with mock outrage: "I think it's slightly unfair that it's put to me in that way."

As for Andy "Dodgy" Hayman, his forensic police memory was on display:

Andy Hayman, the former Met assistant commissioner who had overall responsibility for the original 2006 News of the World phone-hacking investigation, had also drunk champagne with a journalist from the paper.

At a meeting in the Oriel restaurant Hayman spent £47 on a bottle for someone he recalls was from the paper and was possibly a female, although he could not recall their name.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard's finest still maintain they didn't know Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's phone had been hacked by the Murdoch empire, despite having the evidence as early as 2006:

He (Yates) insisted his controversial statement in 2009 that there was no fresh evidence to warrant a new investigation was based on the Met's knowledge at the time.

He told the inquiry he had asked for evidence that Prescott's phone had been hacked "scores" of times but was not given documentary proof until late 2010.

Prescott, who tweeted throughout Yates's Leveson appearance, said he "only discovered I was targeted by NOTW after contacting Met's Legal Services Directorate - more than 5 months after repeatedly asking Yates".

Yates told Leveson it was "deeply regrettable" that he did not know about Prescott or that the deputy prime minister had not been informed that his phone security had been compromised.

"I cannot tell you the amount of times I checked and sought further and better particulars about the possibility that Mr Prescott's phone had been interfered with," he said.

Full piece here.

[Peter Lemkin]

Scotland Yard top brass frequently drank champagne and dined in exclusive London restaurants with Murdoch editors and reporters.

They claim this was all perfectly innocent.

Yates of the Yard, now Yates of Bahrain, claimed the dinners "were private and they were more likely to have discussed football than police matters".

In response to a News Intl email suggesting that a woman reporter who had "plied" Yates with champagne, should "call in" those favours, Yates responded with mock outrage: "I think it's slightly unfair that it's put to me in that way."

As for Andy "Dodgy" Hayman, his forensic police memory was on display:

Andy Hayman, the former Met assistant commissioner who had overall responsibility for the original 2006 News of the World phone-hacking investigation, had also drunk champagne with a journalist from the paper.

At a meeting in the Oriel restaurant Hayman spent £47 on a bottle for someone he recalls was from the paper and was possibly a female, although he could not recall their name.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard's finest still maintain they didn't know Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's phone had been hacked by the Murdoch empire, despite having the evidence as early as 2006:

He (Yates) insisted his controversial statement in 2009 that there was no fresh evidence to warrant a new investigation was based on the Met's knowledge at the time.

He told the inquiry he had asked for evidence that Prescott's phone had been hacked "scores" of times but was not given documentary proof until late 2010.

Prescott, who tweeted throughout Yates's Leveson appearance, said he "only discovered I was targeted by NOTW after contacting Met's Legal Services Directorate - more than 5 months after repeatedly asking Yates".

Yates told Leveson it was "deeply regrettable" that he did not know about Prescott or that the deputy prime minister had not been informed that his phone security had been compromised.

"I cannot tell you the amount of times I checked and sought further and better particulars about the possibility that Mr Prescott's phone had been interfered with," he said.

Full piece here.

Men of the finest moral character and ethics, all! Men of integrity and truth! The UK is in good hands. Stop, make that great hands. Nothing to fix, no investigations needed to proceed. Business as usual.

I N C R E D I B L E! A Scandal fit for the 'gods'! [Too bad all these slime seem to have 'get out of jail free' cards]

[Jan Klimkowski]

This is a scandal that just keep giving!....come on...give it ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:phone::kraka:

Yes - it's still giving.

It looks like the national security part of Tony Blair's government knew all the way back in 2006.

(Former Senior Scotland Yard officer and head of the aborted 2006 police investigation) Clarke claimed that the government had been informed of the details of the hacking case, and Reid had discussed it with him during a meeting about counter-terrorism.

Leveson asked if the inquiry had been given the MPS briefing paper, and when told no, asked for it. Jay said there might be public interest immunity claims over part of it.

I suspect the existence of this Scotland Yard briefing paper (a WRITTEN record and thus a physical audit trail subject to Freedom of Information requests) was NOT meant to become public, and TPTB will now be desperate to prevent publication of it and even reporting of its existence.

Hence more diversionary nonsense about that police horse today...

Here's the full piece about Scotland Yard's briefing of the national security state:

Labour minister and MI5 'briefed about phone hacking scandal'

Leveson inquiry hears Met police allegedly sent report to John Reid and security service, but it was not made public

David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 March 2012 13.59 GMT

The Tony Blair government was secretly briefed about the phone hacking scandal, according to the head of the aborted 2006 police investigation into the News of the World.

Peter Clarke, the Metropolitan police's former deputy assistant commissioner, made the unexpected disclosure to the Leveson inquiry this week. The hearing heard details of how the targeting of Labour cabinet ministers was subsequently kept quiet.

Clarke told Lord Justice Leveson that a confidential report on the phone hacking discoveries was sent by the Met to the then home secretary, John Reid, who personally discussed it with him. A briefing was also sent to the cabinet office at No 10, and to MI5. After hearing Clarke's disclosure on Thursday, Leveson immediately demanded that the Reid report be handed over to his inquiry.

This disclosure raises the possibility for the first time that the Blair government colluded in a cover-up. At the time, according to former ministers, the Labour administration was anxious to keep on good terms with the Murdoch papers.

At least three cabinet ministers in the then Blair government were among the News of the World's hacking targets, with national security implications. But this fact was withheld from the public during the trial of former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who formerly worked for the paper, and full details have only emerged during this week's Leveson hearings into the behaviour of the police.

Former home secretary David Blunkett, the then serving culture and media minister, Tessa Jowell, and the then deputy prime minister John Prescott were discovered at an early stage by police to be hacking targets. But none were named in the subsequent prosecution of the News of the World's allegedly single "rogue reporter", Goodman, and Mulcaire.

Prescott was never informed by anyone of the News of the World's behaviour towards him, although police were aware of it almost from the day they raided Mulcaire's home and found on the premises incriminating documents about the deputy prime minister and his assistant.

Jowell was privately told by police at an early stage that her phone had been hacked, after they made the discovery on 26 July 2006, before any arrests had occurred. Although Jowell was in charge of media regulation, she refused to co-operate with police's request to sign a statement which could be used for the prosecution, and the facts were subsequently not revealed, the inquiry was told this week by police witnesses.

Blunkett, too, was privately told of what had happened to him by the then police commissioner, the inquiry heard. But he too, did not participate in the case, and subsequently refused to talk about it.

All three ministers had cause for personal embarrassment. Jowell's husband, David Mills, was the subject of controversy over claims relating to offshore companies he had helped Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi set up. Blunkett had been involved in an affair with Spectator publisher Kimberly Fortier which ended acrimoniously.

Prescott, as he described to the inquiry this week, had been targeted by the newspaper because of an affair with his then aide, Tracey Temple.

The Blair government and its spin doctor Alastair Campbell had a policy of cultivating close links with the Murdoch papers, including the News of the World, which had supported the party at past general elections. According to Prescott and others, they were unwilling to challenge the behaviour of the Murdoch press.

Police failed to turn over to the Leveson inquiry the secret report they had sent to the home secretary. When Clarke disclosed its existence during his testimony, Leveson called for the inquiry to be supplied with it.

Because the then Met commissioner, Ian Blair, had personally told Blunkett he had been hacked, counsel to the inquiry suggested a senior police officer should similarly have notified Prescott.

Clarke admitted on Thursday that Prescott should have been informed that he and his adviser had been targeted. He said he had no idea why no one had done this. He would have expected the senior investigating officer who was DCS Philip Williams to have contacted Prescott's office, he said.

Clarke claimed that the government had been informed of the details of the hacking case, and Reid had discussed it with him during a meeting about counter-terrorism.

[Peter Lemkin]

Rupert Murdoch Makes James an Offer He Can't Refuse
D.D. Guttenplan on March 2, 2012 - 10:36 AM ET

London

Does Elizabeth Murdoch know how to make gnocchi? Because this was the week when it became blindingly obvious that whoever was scripting Rupert Murdoch's movespersonally flying in to London to open a new Sun on Sunday to replace the toxic News of the World; tweeting a defense of his fallen favorite, Rebekah Brooks, when it emerged that in addition to presiding over a paper that paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in bribes to policemen she'd also been loaned a police horse to ride; stripping his son James of his power over News International, the subsidiary that runs the News Corp.'s British newspapers and packing him off to work with Moe Greene in Las Vegas (Surely that should be "with Chase Carey in New York"?ed.)the swelling soundtrack had to be by Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone.

We still have a long wait for the box setand the next installment, Murdoch in America: Judgment Day, won't be released until prosecutors at the Department of Justice decide whether the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is designed to prevent the payment of bribes to foreign officials by US corporations in order to gain unfair advantage, applies to what Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers told the Leveson Inquiry was "the delivery of regular, frequent and sometimes significant sums of money to small numbers of public officials by journalists" in order to gain exclusive access to "salacious gossip" which the Sun, Murdoch's flagship British tabloid, could then splash all over the front page. Which presumably helped the paper sell more copies than its less-wired competitors.

Akers's clear, detailed and devastating testimony on Monday meant that the Murdoch organization's brief counter-attack against Brian Leveson's investigation into British press corruption, which culminated in Trevor Kavanagh, the Sun's former political editor and hatchet-man, whining about a "witch hunt," was now sleeping with the fishes. Indeed if you were looking for the moment when the phone hacking probe turned from scandal to soap opera you could hardly better Kavanagh's complaint that Murdoch's "journalists are being treated like members of an organized crime gang." Just how far that fall from grace is measured was shown on Thursday, when John Yates, the former assistant police commissioner who resigned over the summer, and who in 2009 decided there was no reason to reopen the phone hacking investigationand who refused to tell deputy prime minister John Prescott his phone had been hackedwas quizzed about his habit of sharing a relaxing glassor bottleof champagne, or a meal at the Ivy, with his good friends at News International.

Earlier in the week the Welsh singer Charlotte Church settled her phone hacking claim against Murdoch for £ 650,000. "You are fighting a massive corporation with endless resources, a phenomenal amount of power, and it is just made really difficult," said Church, who told the Guardian the News of the World "published a story about an affair her father had had and approached [Charlotte's mother] Maria Church to tell her they had a "part two" of the story which they promised they would withdraw if she gave a first-hand account of her suicide attempt. They also asked to take photographs of her arms." In November Church told the Leveson Inquiry that as a 13-year-old girl she'd been pressured into waiving her £100,000 fee to sing at Rupert Murdoch's wedding to Wendi Deng in exchange for favorable treatment in his newspapers. (In case you were wondering, the statute of limitations for extortion under New York law is five years.)

Even in such a busy week it is worth taking a minute to reflect on what amounts to the firing of James Murdoch by his father. And here, tempting as it is to wallow in the family saga, the real action is taking place far from public view. Sidelining James may make for dramatic headlines, but what Murdoch is clearly trying to avoid is not the "Sicilian Vespers"the baptismal bloodbath at the end of Godfather Part 1but, to change metaphors, a Saturday Night Massacre. As older readers will recall, that was when a besieged and paranoid Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox, which in turn triggered the resignation of Attorney General Elliot Richardson, ultimately hastening Nixon's resignation. The casting is straightforward: Murdoch as Nixon and Joel Klein, the former Justice Department trust-buster now heading News Corp's Management and Standards Committee, as Cox. And in a post-modern masterstroke, the part of Roger Ailes, Nixon's media strategist and the author of "A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News" will be played by… Roger Ailes, Murdoch's American muscle and president of Fox News.

In the past few weeks Klein's committee has been desperately throwing underlings overboard in an attempt to protect the Murdochs. So far the strategy has workedat least in terms of arrests. Certainly sending James to New York makes it unlikely his sleep will be disturbed by Scotland Yard.

But there is still the risk that at some point Murdoch himself will tell Klein's committee they have done enough to help the British police. Or thatand this is made far more complicated by US election year politicsKlein's former colleagues at the Justice Department will start issuing subpoenas. When that happens perhaps Kleinand certainly James Murdochmight want to brush up on the Code Corleone: "Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you, but don't ever side with anyone against the family again."

[Jan Klimkowski]

As per my post above, Scotland Yard told Leveson too much, and former Blair government ministers Reid, Blunkett and Jowell are now denying they were informed of phone hacking back in 2006 to the extent that top cops claimed.

Someone is lying.

Labour minister and MI5 'briefed about phone hacking scandal'

Leveson inquiry hears Met police allegedly sent report to John Reid and security service, but it was not made public

This story was updated at 6.20pm to include comments from John Reid, David Blunkett and Tessa Jowell

David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 March 2012 13.59 GMT

The Tony Blair government was secretly briefed about the phone hacking scandal, according to the head of the aborted 2006 police investigation into the News of the World.

Peter Clarke, the Metropolitan police's former deputy assistant commissioner, made the unexpected claim to the Leveson inquiry this week. The hearing heard details of how the targeting of Labour cabinet ministers was subsequently kept quiet.

Clarke told Lord Justice Leveson that a confidential report on the phone hacking discoveries was sent by the Met to the then home secretary, John Reid, who personally discussed it with him. Clarke indicated that Reid was told about the targeting of deputy prime minister John Prescott. A briefing was also sent to the cabinet office at No 10, and to MI5.

After hearing Clarke's disclosure on Thursday, Leveson immediately demanded that the Reid report be handed over to his inquiry.

But Reid himself denied receiving such a report. 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 on oath: "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 John 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."

The police claim to Leveson raised the possibility for the first time that the Blair government colluded in a cover-up. At the time, according to former ministers, the Labour administration was anxious to keep on good terms with the Murdoch papers.

At least three cabinet ministers in the then Blair government were among the 44 MPs and 10 peers now thought to be the News of the World's hacking targets, with national security implications. But these facts were withheld from the public during the trial of former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who formerly worked for the paper, and full details have only emerged during this week's Leveson hearings into the behaviour of the police.

The then serving culture and media minister, Tessa Jowell, and former home secretary David Blunkett, as well as the then deputy prime minister John Prescott, were discovered at an early stage by police to be hacking targets. But none were named in the subsequent prosecution of the News of the World's allegedly single "rogue reporter", Goodman, and Mulcaire.

Prescott was never informed by anyone of the News of the World's behaviour towards him, although police were aware of it almost from the day they raided Mulcaire's home and found on the premises incriminating documents about the deputy prime minister and his assistant.

Blunkett, too, says he was never told he had been a target, via a friend for whom he left messages. The then police commissioner, Ian Blair, phoned him in Italy to tell him of the arrests, Blunkett says. But, according to the former home secretary, the commissioner said only that Blunkett personally had not been hacked ... Blunkett's office said: "He naturally assumed this was a courtesy call. Everyone is, of course, wiser now with hindsight."

Jowell was privately told by police at an early stage that her phone had been hacked, after they made the discovery on 26 July 2006, before any arrests had occurred, according to police testimony to Leveson.

Police further claimed to Leveson that Jowell refused to co-operate with police's request to sign a statement which could be used for the prosecution, and the facts about her were subsequently not revealed.

DCS Keith Surtees said: "I contacted several potential victims to inform them that their phones had been illegally intercepted and to request that they provide statements and assist any future trial. One of these victims was Tessa Jowell. All of the potential victims declined to assist us with the prosecution."

Jowell today denied that she had failed to co-operate. A statement issued by her lawyer said: "Tessa Jowell has a clear recollection of the conversation and is sure that she was not asked to provide a statement. She has confirmed that she was simply told about the hacking, given some security advice and told there was nothing else she needed to do. She said: "If I had been asked, I would have considered myself under an obligation to provide a statement as I have now done to Operation Weeting."

All three ministers had cause for personal embarrassment. Jowell's husband, David Mills, was the subject of controversy over claims relating to offshore companies he had helped Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi set up. Blunkett had been involved in an affair with Spectator publisher Kimberly Fortier which ended acrimoniously.

Prescott, as he described to the inquiry this week, had been targeted by the newspaper because of an affair with his then aide, Tracey Temple.

The Blair government and its spin doctor Alastair Campbell had a policy of cultivating close links with the Murdoch papers, including the News of the World, which had supported the party at past general elections. According to Prescott and others, they were unwilling to challenge the behaviour of the Murdoch press.

Clarke admitted on Thursday that Prescott should have been informed that he and his adviser had been targeted. He said he had no idea why no one had done this. He would have expected the senior investigating officer who was DCS Philip Williams to have contacted Prescott's office, he said.

Police failed to turn over to the Leveson inquiry the secret report they said they had sent to the home office. Leveson asked for it. Robert Jay, counsel to the inquiry, said there might be public interest immunity claims over part of it.

The then commissioner phoned Blunkett who was in Italy, to tell him of the News of the World arrests.. But according to Blunkett, he never told him that the former secretary had himself been a target, because his voicemail messages to a friend, Sally Anderson, were being intercepted.

Blunkett told the Guardian: "I was told explicitly in August 2006 that I had not personally been hacked. This followed the arrest of Glenn Mulcaire and of course there had not been time for any thorough review to take place.

I also want to make it absolutely clear that I knew nothing about the alleged report to John Reid when he was home secretary at that time.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Marunchak claims he's innocent, guv, and criticizes MP Tom Watson for using Parliamentary privilege to make allegations against him.

We can all make our own judgements on the available evidence.

Former NoW journalist denies ordering surveillance in Daniel Morgan case

Alex Marunchak rejects allegations made at Leveson inquiry that he arranged for policeman leading investigation to be trailed

Sandra Laville Crime correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 March 2012 12.13 GMT


The former News of the World journalist alleged to have put the police officer running the Daniel Morgan murder inquiry under surveillance has dismissed the allegations.

Alex Marunchak spoke out as Scotland Yard said it would undertake a forensic review of all the material in the murder, following 25 years of having failed to bring anyone to justice.

Morgan's murder in 1987 has become one of the Yard's most controversial unsolved killings. After five inquiries, and the collapse of the only murder trial brought in the case, it remains mired in allegations that police corruption tainted investigations over more than two decades.

This week, former Crimewatch presenter Jacqui Hames alleged at the Leveson inquiry that in 2002 Marunchak had commissioned surveillance of her and her then husband Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook who led the last two inquiries into the murder in order to "subvert" his investigation.

Marunchak who was on the News of the World newsdesk for 10 years before becoming an associate editor in 1997, with primary responsibility for editing the paper's Irish edition was also named by the Labour backbencher Tom Watson in a commons adjournment debate as being responsible for ordering the surveillance on behalf of his friend and business associate Jonathan Rees, then a prime suspect for the murder.

The fifth inquiry into the murder collapsed last year, and Rees and two other men were acquitted after the judge ruled senior police had coached one of the main supergrasses in the case, and it was revealed that large amounts of evidence had not been disclosed as a result of the vast material gathered over so many years.

"The person investigating the murder was put under close surveillance by a close business associate of the man being investigated," Watson said.

The MP also claimed that Morgan went to Marunchak with a story making allegations about police corruption a week before he died, that he was offered £40,000 for the story, and that Marunchak also paid the relatives of police officers for information about the Soham murders in 2002.

But in an article in Press Gazette, Marunchak retaliated. "It astonishes me an MP can abuse parliamentary privilege and waste everybody's time by peddling untruths in this way," he said.

He went on to say the MP's comments about his professional dealings with Morgan were "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."

Marunchak said he had never heard of Daniel Morgan or Southern Investigations until after the 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."

The first time he had heard Morgan's name was after he was murdered, when his news editor asked him to look into the story, he said.

"Neither I, nor anyone else at the News of the World, offered Morgan £40,000 for his story … we never knew he even existed prior to his murder."

Watson said he had evidence that a police contact had overheard Marunchak claiming he had paid relatives of officers involved in investigating the Soham murders.

But Marunchak said at the time of the murders he was editing the Irish edition of the News of the World and was based in Dublin.

"I never worked on stories about the Soham murders, never wrote copy, nor interviewed anyone. I did not pay any relatives of police officers involved in the Soham murders."

Asked by Press Gazette about the claims made by Hames and Watson that he had put Cook under surveillance, Marunchak said he had passed on to his London newsdesk information from a source that Hames a former police officer who at the time presented the BBC's Crimewatch programme was having an affair with a senior police officer on the show.

"I did nothing to check this, because it was of no interest to me," he said. "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."

Nick Herbert, the police minister, said on Wednesday that the Yard was now carrying out a full forensic review of the Morgan murder. He said the issues of corruption were serious, as was the failure to bring anyone to justice for Morgan's killing.