Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

Today's revelation is deeply concerning.

Nick Davies is The Guardian reporter who has been the lead journalist on this story.

Here is a key article on the depth of the corruption and linkage involving certain Scotland Yard luminaries and the Murdoch empire. Note the subject matter is not the hacking of a celebrity's phone, but rather the attempted coverup of a brutal murder.

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.

Today's breaking news is that....

Former Det Chief Supt Dave Cook has been arrested for suspected inappropriate contact with a journalist.

Not by Scotland Yard but by the IPCC.

This is beyond exceptional. The IPCC is effectively a watchdog. It is not a police force.

Does this mean Cook is to be prosecuted for speaking to Davies? Ie for blowing the whistle?

Power protects its own.

The fix is in.

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.