Phone hacking scandal deepens

[David Guyatt]

Rebekah's been busy having an affair with her co-accused, it seems:

Phone-hacking trial told of Brooks and Coulson's 'six-year affair'

Prosecution says it is revealing relationship to show extent of secrecy and trust
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• Nick Davies
  
• The Guardian, Thursday 31 October 2013 21.20 GMT
  

Phone-hacking trial: Andy Coulson leaves the Old Bailey after hearing details of his secret affair with Rebekah Brooks revealed. Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters

The prosecution in the phone-hacking trial lobbed an emotional bombshell into the case by stating that Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson had a secret extra-marital affair between 1998 and 2004, whose existence had been revealed in a highly charged note that the crown argued implied an intense bond between the two.
Andrew Edis QC told the Old Bailey jury that the clandestine relationship had come to light when police found a computer in a cupboard at Brooks's London flat on the day of her arrest in July 2011, containing a letter, written by Brooks to Coulson in February 2004, indicating that they had been having an affair for at least six years.
The letter, said Edis, was "elegant, intelligent and well-written" and evidently composed in reply to an attempt by Coulson to end the relationship by introducing new rules to limit their contact, something which had caused her "a great deal of grief".
Brooks and Coulson sat side by side in the dock, staring without expression into the well of the court as Edis read the jury a section of the letter in which Brooks wrote: "The fact is that you are my very best friend. I tell you everything, I confide in you, I seek your advice, I love you, care about you, worry about you. We laugh and cry together … In fact, without our relationship in my life, I am really not sure how I will cope.
"I'm frightened to be without you but, bearing in mind 'the rules', you will not know how I am doing, and visa versa [sic] … Obviously I can't discuss my worries, concerns, problems at work with you any more."
Edis said that the jury needed to know about the clandestine relationship because the two former editors face charges of conspiracy to hack phones. "The first question, therefore, is how well did they know each other? How much did they trust each other? The fact that they were in this relationship, which was a secret, means that they trusted each other quite a lot with at least that secret. That's why we are telling you about it," the prosecuting QC said.
At that time, Coulson had been married to his wife Eloise Patrick since 2000, and Brooks had been married to the TV actor Ross Kemp since 2002. Brooks was editor of the Sun, and Coulson was editor of the News of the World; previously Coulson had been her deputy at the News of the World, when she edited the Sunday tabloid between 2000 and 2003.
The affair between the two former editors was disclosed on the day that the court heard detailed allegations that Brooks and Coulson had used illegally hacked voicemail messages to expose the extra-marital affairs of Labour ministers John Prescott and David Blunkett and of the trade union leader Andy Gilchrist. The jury was shown a leader column published by the Sun under Brooks's editorship which described Gilchrist as "a lying, cheating, low-life fornicator".
The whole day's proceedings focused on just one of the seven counts on the indictment which alleges that Brooks, Coulson, Stuart Kuttner, the newspaper's former managing editor, and Ian Edmondson, the former news editor, conspired to intercept voicemail messages. All four deny the charges.
The prosecution had disclosed the affair in the context of the hacking of the phone of Milly Dowler, the 13-year-old Surrey schoolgirl who went missing on 21 March 2002. The jury was told on Wednesday that the News of the World's specialist hacker, Glenn Mulcaire, has pleaded guilty to intercepting her voicemail.
Edis argued that, although Rebekah Brooks had been on holiday in Dubai during the key week of the Dowler story in April 2002, the nature of her relationship with her deputy, Coulson, was among a number of factors which made it "simply incredible" that she had not been aware of the hacking of Milly's phone.
He said notes kept by Mulcaire showed that he had been tasked to target Milly on 10 April by the former news editor Neville Thurlbeck, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hack phones. Mulcaire had found a message from a recruitment agency, which appeared to invite the missing girl to go for a job interview at a factory in Telford, West Midlands.
In fact, the jury heard, the message had been intended for somebody else with a similar name and similar phone number. Believing they might find Milly alive before the police, the News of the World on 12 April had sent a team of reporters and photographers to the factory. When the visit yielded no sign of the missing girl, Edis said, Thurlbeck and the managing editor, Stuart Kuttner, had both attempted to persuade Surrey police to co-operate on a story and had told police explicitly that they were in possession of voicemail.
The News of the World then published a story on 14 April that quoted verbatim the message from the recruitment agency, though that had been removed from later editions. One of the reporters who was sent to the Telford factory had claimed his expenses for petrol under the heading "Milly Dowler answer phone messages".
"This phone hacking does not seem to have been much of a secret," Edis told the jury. "Was it only the editor who didn't know it had happened?" He said that from Dubai, Brooks had stayed in regular contact by text and phone with Coulson. "It is highly likely that if they were talking about work, they were exchanging confidences and discussing difficulties. The point of that letter is that what Mr Coulson, who was on deck as editor that week, knew, Mrs Brooks knew too."
The jury were also played a tape-recording made by David Blunkett in August 2004 when, as home secretary, he was visited in his office by Coulson who tried to persuade him to confirm that he had been having an affair with a married woman, Kimberly Quinn. Coulson argued that the fact that she was married meant that any newspaper would want to publish the story.
Coulson told Blunkett: "I'm extremely confident about the information." He refused to say how he knew. Edis said Mulcaire's notes and audiotapes that had been found in a News International safe showed Coulson's source in fact was the hacking of messages left by Blunkett.
The jury heard that in their efforts to expose Prescott's extra-marital affair, the News of the World had offered Lord Prescott's lover Tracey Temple £100,000 for her story, hacked the phone of Prescott's special adviser Joan Hammell, and also hacked the phones of two rival journalists, Dennis Rice and Sebastian Hamilton from the Mail on Sunday, in an attempt to steal their story.
Brooks, Coulson and Clive Goodman also deny conspiring to pay money to corrupt public officials. Brooks together with her husband, Charlie Brooks, her PA, Cheryl Carter, and her head of security, Mark Hanna, deny destroying or concealing evidence. The trial continues.