Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

Sometimes, only a cascading bellylaugh is appropriate....

Andy Coulson denies knowledge of criminal activity at News of the World

• Tommy Sheridan trial hears No 10 media chief reject claims he knew of widespread phone hacking
• Scotland Yard finds insufficient evidence for fresh prosecutions in hacking case

Nick Davies and Severin Carrell guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 December 2010 16.56 GMT

The prime minister's director of communications, Andy Coulson, was today accused of lying to a court and suffering from amnesia in his account of the phone-hacking affair at the News of the World. Coulson repeatedly denied all knowledge of criminal activity at the paper, where he was formerly the editor.

Giving evidence at Glasgow high court, Coulson said it was "nonsense" to suggest that the relationship between News International and the senior Scotland Yard officer who investigated the affair "stinks of corruption". He denied that the paper had known that former assistant commissioner Andy Hayman was having an affair and that this might have compromised the independence of the investigation.

Coulson was confronted with detailed notes of alleged phone hacking made by Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World private investigator at the centre of the affair. He said: "I'm saying that I had absolutely no knowledge of it. I certainly didn't instruct anyone to do anything at the time or anything else which was untoward."

Coulson was giving evidence in the trial of Tommy Sheridan, the Scottish socialist politician who is accused of committing perjury in order to win a 2006 libel trial over News of the World stories that accused him of illicit affairs and visits to a sex club. Sheridan is presenting his own defence.

In more than three hours in the witness box, Coulson endured a barrage of claims that he variously:

• supervised a newsroom in which more than half of the reporters used a private investigator to gain illegal access to confidential data;

• asked Clive Goodman, the reporter at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World, to "take the blame for the sake of the paper";

• was responsible for recruiting a feature writer named Dan Evans who has since been suspended by the paper in relation to new allegations of phone hacking;

• had a history of social contact with Andy Hayman, who then led the inquiry into the the paper and subsequently went to work for another newspaper from the same company.

Meanwhile in London, the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, announced that a renewed Scotland Yard investigation into phone-hacking allegations at the newspaper had produced insufficient evidence to mount any prosecutions.

In court, Coulson denied all of the allegations and at one point suggested that Sheridan lived in "a parallel universe". He said: "I like to think I was professional. I like to think I applied certain standards. I like to think we worked hard at the News of the World."

In a series of tense exchanges, Sheridan asked him: "Is it collective amnesia you have got, Mr Coulson, or are you just lying?" Coulson replied: "I'm not lying to you, Mr Sheridan. No. I'm doing my very best to answer your questions."

Sheridan asked Coulson about his relationship with Andy Hayman. He said that he had been an assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard and he believed Hayman had headed the inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal at the paper. Coulson said he had been on '"not unfriendly terms" with Hayman during his time at the News of the World: "I may have seen him socially, but we were not pals. I may have had a meal with him. I certainly had a cup of tea with him."

Sheridan asked whether at the time that Andy Hayman was supervising the inquiry into phone hacking at the paper, Coulson had been in possession of personal information about him "which might have prevented yourself being thoroughly investigated". Coulson said this was not true.

Sheridan said: "You're under oath, Mr Coulson."

"I know I'm under oath," Coulson replied. "My answer is still no."

Later, Sheridan suggested that the paper had been aware at the time of the investigation that Hayman had been having an affair with a press officer from the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Coulson denied this. Sheridan added that Hayman had later resigned and taken work with The Times, part of News International which also owns the News of the World. Coulson replied: "If you're insinuating there was some kind of a deal done, it's utter nonsense."

Sheridan asked him if he agreed that Hayman's move from Scotland Yard to News International "stinks of corruption".

"I absolutely disagree with you, Mr Sheridan. I think it's nonsense."

Sheridan confronted Coulson with extracts from Glenn Mulcaire's paperwork, seized by Scotland Yard in August 2006, which contained notes made by the investigator of Sheridan's mobile phone number, address and PIN code. Coulson said he knew nothing about it: "I know what I have read. And as I understand it, he would seek to access people's voicemail either by inputting the PIN code, I assume, or through some other means. I just don't know exactly how Mr Mulcaire worked."

He said he had never met, spoken to or emailed him: "I hadn't heard of Glenn Mulcaire until after the court case."

He agreed that he was aware that the News of the World had a contract worth more than £100,000 a year with Glenn Mulcaire's company, Nine Consultancy, but he said he had never asked what the contract was for and could not remember if the company had provided any particular facts for the paper. "Whatever work Nine Consultancy carried out under this legitimate contract I would have expected to be legitimate, legal work."

Sheridan asked Coulson if he was aware that the information commissioner's office had run an inquiry known as Operation Motorman which found that, during his time at the News of the World, 21 of his reporters had used a private investigator named Steve Whittamore to gain illegal access to confidential data. Coulson agreed that the paper employed about 40 news reporters but suggested that it was unfair to say that more than half of them had used Whittamore, since the evidence collected by Operation Motorman covered a period of some years and that some of the 21 reporters could have been freelancers.

Asked if he was aware that Whittamore had been convicted of criminal access to data in April 2005 "under your watch", Coulson said: "I was aware that there was a case. I didn't know what the charge was or what it resulted in. I could be wrong, I don't believe it resulted in charges against News of the World reporters."

In relation to Whittamore, he added: "I wasn't involved in that in any way, shape or form. I hadn't heard of the guy until after Motorman. I never met him. I never spoke to him. I never dealt with him."

Sheridan suggested it was "hard to understand how it could be that, while all this illegal activity was going on under your nose, you didn't know anything about it". Coulson conceded that things had gone badly wrong under his editorship but repeated that he had known nothing about it. He said he did not micromanage his staff and trusted them to do their jobs.

Asked about the police inquiry that led to the arrest of Mulcaire and Goodman in August 2006, Coulson said that he could not remember whether police had searched his desk at the newspaper's Wapping headquarters. "I think not," he added. He could not remember whether police had searched the desk of any reporter other than Goodman.

Sheridan put it to Coulson that he had emailed Goodman asking him "to take the blame for the phone-hacking scandal for the good of the paper". Coulson replied: "No. I did not." He asked Sheridan whether he had such an email. Sheridan replied that Clive Goodman was being "cited" as a witness, the Scottish term for being called to give evidence.

Sheridan asked whether he was aware that a recent police inquiry had led to the suspension from the News of the World of a reporter named Dan Evans. He suggested that this undermined the News of the World's claim that Goodman, the paper's former royal reporter who was jailed for phone hacking in January 2007, was a "rogue reporter".

Coulson agreed that Evans had been recruited as a feature writer during his time as editor but said that his supension had happened long after he had left the paper: "I'm not aware of the details of the Dan Evans case. I may have seen something about it in the paper."

Asked about claims by the former News of the World reporter Sean Hoare that he had been "fully aware" of illegal activities at the paper, Coulson said he had volunteered to talk to police about these allegations. "I sat down with them voluntarily as a witness. I answered all their questions and I'm confident and remain confident that there is no evidence to support the accusations. That's my position."

The trial continues.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec...idan-trial