Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

Before phone-hacking PI Glenn Mulcaire, there was long time News International "fixer", Jonathan Rees, who has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Rees was acquitted because, as Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell admitted to victim Daniel Morgan's family: "It is quite apparent that police corruption was a debilitating factor in that investigation. This was wholly unacceptable.'

Police have admitted corruption in the Met was a debilitating factor' in the £50million collapse of one of Britain's most horrific unsolved murder cases.
The latest attempt to gain justice for the killing 24 years ago of private investigator Daniel Morgan fell apart in farce yesterday after evidence from supergrasses was discredited.
Mr Morgan, 37, was hacked to death with an axe outside a pub. There have been five separate investigations at a cost to the taxpayer of £50million.
After prosecutors offered no evidence against three men yesterday, a Scotland Yard officer sincerely' apologised to Mr Morgan's family. He said police corruption during the initial investigation in 1987 was a key reason that no one had ever been convicted.
The first investigation is feared to have seen the real killers shielded by corrupt officers.

(snip)

Police alleged Glenn Vian was the axeman and that Mr Morgan was murdered because he discovered his business partner Jonathan Rees was using their company to launder the proceeds of drug trafficking. Mr Rees was also said to have obtained information from corrupt serving police officers about operations.

Source.

Below is an outline of the criminal and corrupt career of Jonathan Rees, funded in part by News International.

Jonathan Rees worked from a dingy office in south London. He lived in a cramped flat upstairs. He was divorced, overweight and foul-mouthed but his business was golden: he traded information. His sources may have been corrupt. His actions may have been illegal. But the money kept coming from one golden source in particular. As Rees himself put it: "No one pays like the News of the World do."

(snip)

Rees was jailed for a conspiracy to frame an innocent woman and then accused of conspiracy to murder.

And yet the man who became the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, has always maintained in evidence to parliament and on oath in court that he knew nothing of any illegal activity during the seven years he spent at the top of the News of the World. The entire story unfolded without ever catching his eye. In the same way, the prime minister and his deputy were happy to appoint Coulson last May to oversee the communication between the British government and its people, even though they were already fully aware of all the essential facts.

It begins with the bug. It is commonplace for journalists to interview police officers, but the listening device recorded Rees routinely paying cash directly or indirectly to serving officers, a serious criminal offence. By April 1999, Rees had been working for Fleet Street for several years, and he had created a vibrant network of corrupt sources.

The bug recorded the sound of Detective Constable Tom Kingston from the south-east regional crime squad collecting cash for himself and for his mate who was an intelligence officer involved in the protection of the royal family and other VIPs. DC Kingston sold Jonathan Rees a Special Branch report disclosing police knowledge of an Albanian crime gang in London, Police Gazette bulletins which listed suspects who were wanted for arrest, and threat assessments in relation to the terrorist targets his mate was supposed to be protecting. Rees sold them to newspapers primarily the News of the World, the Sunday Mirror and the Daily Mirror.

DC Kingston eventually ended up in prison for selling a huge quantity of amphetamine which he had stolen from a dealer. But Rees had other links to other corrupt officers. His partner, Sid Fillery, was a former officer who had connections all over the force. The bug recorded their relationship with Duncan Hanrahan and Martin King, who had left the Metropolitan police to work as private investigators and who were similarly well connected until both were jailed in relation to police corruption. Hanrahan also admitted conspiring to rob a courier of £1m at Heathrow airport.

Some of what they sold was tittle-tattle: a disparaging remark made by Tony Blair about John Prescott within earshot of a bent officer; gossip about the sex lives of Buckingham Palace servants. But some of it was highly sensitive. When one of Britain's most notorious criminals, Kenneth Noye, was finally arrested, Rees bought and sold details of the secret intelligence which had led to his capture as well as the precise time and route by which he would be driven from prison to court. When the TV journalist Jill Dando was murdered on her doorstep, Rees procured a police source so that he could sell live details of the investigation.

And the corruption did not stop with the police. The listening device caught Rees boasting that he was in touch with: two former police officers working for Customs and Excise who would accept bribes; a corrupt VAT inspector who had access to business records; and two corrupt bank employees who would hand over details of targets' accounts. (One of them had the first name Robert and was wittily referred to as Rob the Bank. The other was simply Fat Bob.)

(snip)

One person who is familiar with Rees's operations claims that he or one of his associates started using Trojan Horse software, which allowed them to email a target's computer and copy the contents of its hard disk. This source claims that they used this tactic when they were hired by the News of the World to gather background on Freddy Scapaticci, a former IRA man who had been exposed as an MI6 informer codenamed Stakeknife.

Two other sources claim that Rees was commissioning burglaries. One is a private investigator who was told directly by Rees's network that they had broken into targets' home on behalf of a Fleet Street newspaper. The other is a lawyer who claims to have evidence that a high-profile client was the target of an attempted burglary by Rees's associates in search of embarrassing information. There is no independent confirmation of this.

The bug betrayed the sheer speed and ease with which Rees was able to penetrate the flimsy fence of privacy that shields the vast reservoir of personal information now held on the databases controlled by the police and the DVLA, the phone companies and banks. On one occasion, he was asked to find out about the owner of a Porsche. Armed with the registration number, it took him a grand total of 34 minutes to come up with the owner's name and home address from the DVLA and his criminal record from the police computer.

When the Daily Mirror wanted the private mortgage details of all the governors of the Bank of England, Rees delivered.

When the Sunday Mirror wanted to get inside the bank accounts of Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex, it was equally easy, as the bug recorded:

Reporter: "Do you remember a couple of months ago, you got me some details on Edward's business and Sophie's business and how well they were doing?"

Rees: "Yeah."

Reporter: "And you did a check on Sophie's bank account."

Rees: "Yeah."

Reporter: "Is it possible to do that again? I'm not exactly sure what they're after but they seem to be under the impression that, you know, she was in the paper the other day for appearing in Hello magazine. They think she's had some kind of payment off them."

Rees: "What? Off Hello?"

Reporter: "Um, yeah."

Rees: "… find out how much."

Reporter: "Well, we just want to see if there's been any change to her bank account. "

This would be a breach of the Data Protection Act unless the courts held there was a clear public interest in establishing the health of the countess's business or her deal with Hello magazine. The payment of bribes would be a criminal offence regardless of any public interest. Rees made no secret of his criminality. At one point the police bug caught Rees telling a Daily Mirror journalist that they must be careful what they wrote down "because what we're doing is illegal, isn't it? I don't want people coming in and nicking us for a criminal offence, you know."

But Rees did get nicked and for a serious criminal offence. The listening device caught him being hired by a man who was getting divorced and wanted to stop his wife getting custody of their children. Rees came up with a plan. Aided and abetted by yet another corrupt police officer, DC Austin Warnes, he arranged to plant cocaine in the car of the unsuspecting woman, so that she could be charged, convicted and smeared as an unreliable parent.

In order to stop that plot, in September 1999, Scotland Yard raided Rees and charged him with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Fifteen months later, he was taken off Fleet Street's payroll when he was sentenced to six years in prison, increased to seven years on appeal. DC Warnes was sentenced to four years.

And none of this was secret. Apart from the case itself, which was held in open court, the Guardian two years later, in September 2002, ran a three-part series on invasion of privacy and devoted some 3,000 words to a detailed account of Rees's dealings with corrupt police officers and of his use generally of illegal methods to acquire information for the News of the World and other papers.

Based on an authorised briefing by Scotland Yard, the Guardian story made repeated references to the News of the World's involvement and quoted an internal police report to the effect that Rees and his network were involved in the long-term penetration of police intelligence and that "their thirst for knowledge is driven by profit to be accrued from the media". The Crown Prosecution Service found that there was no evidence that the reporters involved knew that Rees was acquiring the material by corrupt means.

A year later, in August 2003, Sid Fillery, who was still running the agency and working for Fleet Street, also got himself arrested and charged with 15 counts of making indecent images of children and one count of possessing indecent images. This was reported in national media. He was later convicted.

All of this extraordinary and well-publicised activity around the News of the World nevertheless apparently escaped the attention of Andy Coulson, even though he had been hired early in 2000 to be deputy editor of the paper under his close friend, Rebekah Wade. And Jonathan Rees was not the only private investigator who was routinely breaking the law for the News of the World without Coulson knowing anything at all about it.

All through the late 1990s, the paper had been hiring an investigator called John Boyall, who, among other services, specialised in acquiring information from confidential databases. He had a wiry young man working as his assistant, named Glenn Mulcaire. In the autumn of 2001, John Boyall fell out with the News of the World's assistant editor, Greg Miskiw, who had been responsible for handling him. Miskiw replaced him by poaching Glenn Mulcaire and giving him a full-time contract.

Source.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Rebekah knew nothing..... :rofl:

Murdoch must have slipped into senile megalomania if he thinks Wade/Brooks can keep her job.

Or he has some deeply ugly material on senior politicians in his files.

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 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 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.

[Peter Lemkin]

The whole ever expanding episode shows the high moral fabric of the rich and powerful. Morality is for the 'little people' only. The ubermensch only concern themselves with profit, profit, power and control. The tabloids have long been used for social and political control - and now we see exposed some of the puppet strings and mechanisms....only a part. The MSM is controlled, as well, for the same ends and by the same people. The whole thing is disgusting, and I hope will wake up the sleeping UK Sheeple. I hope this exposes Murdoch for what he really is - an intelligence-related ultra-right Oligarch pied piper of propaganda.

[Magda Hassan]

Arrests, plural, imminent. 'High' profile NotW staff 'likely' to be arrested. Bet it is not Wade or Murdoch nor Coulson.

Corrupt Met police received more than £100,000 in unlawful payments from senior journalists and executives at the News of the World, the Evening Standard can reveal.
The bribes were made to officers in "sensitive" positions in return for confidential information. Sources say several "high-profile" NoW staff and the officers concerned are likely to be arrested within days and that "serious crimes" have been committed.
The new revelations about the scale of corruption inside Scotland Yard came amid other dramatic developments in the phone hacking controversy today. The Royal British Legion severed its links with the newspaper after claims that even war widows' phones have been hacked.
David Cameron faced calls to appoint a judge to head the public inquiry and start the investigation now.
The commercial backlash against NoW owner Rupert Murdoch also grew as Sainsbury's and npower became the latest companies to withdraw their advertising.
But the extent of corruption involving Scotland Yard and the paper is among the most damaging revelations so far. TheStandard has been told that unlawful payments to police have been made over several years. "They were very large sums, coming to more than six figures," said the source.
"They were running a criminal enterprise at the News of the World. Serious crimes have been found. The question now is about the scalps. There will be high-profile arrests at the paper."
The corrupt payments were discovered after News International began a trawl of internal emails earlier this year in a bid to discover the full extent of the paper's involvement in hacking.
All the emails are believed to relate to the period after Andy Coulson became editor in January 2003 and not to the preceding years when the current News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks ran the paper.
The firm is believed to have uncovered a significant number of emails indicating payments were made to police for tip-offs about criminal investigations and other confidential information.
The newspaper's accounts were also checked and it was confirmed that payments involving "large amounts" had been made. The officers who received the payments are understood to have been in jobs which gave them access to highly confidential information.
Although the emails and payments had no connection with the hacking inquiry, bosses passed the evidence to police. It was handed to Met Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick at a Scotland Yard meeting last month.
Sources say the information caused deep shock at the Met as senior officers realised the severity of the scandal that would hit the force as the investigation proceeded and arrests were made.
"Colour drained from people's faces when they realised what had been happening," said one insider with knowledge of the investigation. "This is as bad for the Met as it is for the paper."
Pseudonyms were used to hide corrupt officers' identities, with payments authorised as going to "informants", although it is understood that police investigations have since identified at least some of the potential culprits.
The areas in which the corrupt officers worked are not known at this stage, but those with access to particularly sensitive information include police in the Met's royal and diplomatic protection squad and detectives in murder and organised crime investigations.
Today's developments follow an announcement by Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson of a new investigation into the corrupt payments. He said the probe, codename Operation Elveden, will be "thorough and robust" and added: "Anyone identified of wrongdoing can expect the full weight of disciplinary measures and, if appropriate, action in the criminal courts."
The Prime Minister yesterday announced a public inquiry into the Met's conduct would be held once criminal probes were over, as MPs accused the force of failing to act properly.
Former home secretary Alan Johnson today said the Met was guilty of "lethargy" in the hacking probe and had decided that with ex-NoW journalist Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire "banged up" it was not necessary to pursue the case.

[Jan Klimkowski]

News of the World axed by News International

Sunday edition of Murdoch's tabloid to be last in the aftermath of political and commercial fallout from phone-hacking scandal

News International announced on Thursday that it is closing the News of the World after this Sunday's edition, with no end in sight to the political and commercial fallout from the phone-hacking scandal after 72 hours of mounting crisis.

Sunday's edition of the paper will be the last, News International chairman James Murdoch told News of the World staff on Thursday afternoon.

Murdoch told employees at the 168-year-old title: "The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed to when it came to itself".

Murdoch said in a statement: "Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued."

Murdoch also conceded the company had "made statements to parliament without being in full possession of the facts. This was wrong".

He said "the News of the World and News International wrongly maintained that these issues were confined to one reporter" and that the company had passed information to the police which would demonstrate this.

"Those who acted wrongly will have to face the consequences," he said.

Murdoch also said in his statement to staff that he had authorised out-of-court payments to victims of hacking: "I now know that I did not have a complete picture when I did so."

He added: "That was wrong and is a matter of serious regret."

It is the first national newspaper to close since Rupert Murdoch shut News International mid-market tabloid Today in 1995.

The News of the World was Rupert Murdoch's first UK newspaper acquisition in 1968 and its profits helped him build his publishing and broadcasting empire in this country and the US.

The title remains the UK's biggest-selling paper, with a circulation of 2.66m in May this year. In 1962, when the Audit Bureau of Circulations began publishing regular newspaper sales figures, the News of the World was selling 6.66m.

A spokesman for the company would not comment on whether News International will continue to publish a tabloid title on a Sunday.

The News of the World has been NI's most profitable title for many years.

There are already industry rumours that the News of the World's stablemate the Sun could be turned into a seven-day operation. News International has already announced plans to move to seven-day working across its four titles the Sun, News of the World, the Times and Sunday Times and the internet domain name thesunonsunday.co.uk was registered two days ago, although the purchaser's identity is unclear.

Murdoch told staff some of them would be leaving the company and said that was a matter of regret. He paid tribute to their "good work".

Source.

We have three parties who have been exposed as involved in criminal or grossly negligent behaviour:

i) the Murdoch empire and its immoral and criminal journalism;

ii) police officers who have conducted a complete non-investigation of criminal behaviour, and police officers who, according to a paper trail including News International documentation, are likely to face criminal prosecution for corruption;

iii) PM Cameron who hired Andy Coulson, after he had resigned from the NOTW over royal hacking, as the Tory Head of Propaganda, their version of Alistair "I'm telling the troof, honest" Campbell.

Now, Murdoch minor thinks he can manage the news agenda by closing down the NOTW, firing ordinary journalists and keeping senior managers who were in charge during the criminality (eg Rebekah Wade/Brooks) employed.

The closure of the NOTW shows the complete contempt of the Murdoch empire for the rest of the world. It will simply be replaced by a Sunday edition of The Sun (or some such variant), and it will be Murdoch business as usual.

The investigation of the criminal behaviour of the Murdoch empire, corrupt police officers and PM Cameron's relationship with Andy Coulson needs to continue robustly and rapidly.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Last night, watching BBC2's Newsnight, I briefly stirred from slumber when their film used first hand insider sources (unidentified) to reveal how Met Police corruption went down.

The problem for any rozzer seeking to sell information to a hack is the electronic audit trail. Every key stroke on a police computer is recorded and can be accessed retrospectively by Professional Standards/Internal Affairs cops.

So, how did these corrupt cops get round the electronic audit trail?

Allegedly, they set the NOTW hacks up as Confidential Informants. This automatically took all activity outside all standard electronic audit.

If this allegation is true - again, that Met Police officers set up NOTW journalists as Confidential Informants (ie protected intelligence sources) - then the Met is in deep deep trouble.

The more humorous colour is that the payments would often take place in a drive-thru McDonalds near Wapping, where the cash would be handed over in a brown paper bag over a Royale with Cheese.

Some things change.

Some things stay the same.

[Magda Hassan]

Rebekah Brooks is Keyser Söze


Rebekah Brooks is legendary underworld kingpin Keyser Söze, the mythical crime figure who garners unrivalled influence amongst law enforcement and billionaire media moguls alike, it was confirmed this morning.
Suspicions were raised when ruthless megalomaniac Rupert Murdoch chose to shut the world's most popular profit-making newspaper, rather than have her exposed in her true identity.
Media analyst Deborah Matthews told us, "I knew it! I've been saying for years that Brooks was pulling the strings all along, but no-one believed me. There is only one possible reason she's not been fired, and that's that she's the real mastermind behind the whole News Corp crime syndicate."
"You only have to look into her eyes to see the machiavellian heart that marked her out as more than just a mere newspaper editor'. I bet Murdoch is nothing more than her puppet."
"Plus she sometimes walks with a bit of a limp, have you noticed that?"
"I heard she's got some nuclear shit on everyone from David Cameron down to the guy who puts the books back at Westminster library. So I guess we'll now see how much influence a genuine crime lord really has."
Rebekah Brooks uncovered

It is expected that now Keyser Söze's true identity is known to the public, she will use whatever is in her eyeline to concoct an elaborate back-story to ensure that everyone believes she was an innocent party.
As one former News International worker said, "I've seen her do it at parties, it's a pretty impressive trick."
"But the greatest trick Brooks ever pulled was convincing people she wasn't at the very heart of all this."http://newsthump.com/2011/07/08/rebekah-...yser-soze/

[Magda Hassan]

The Guardian are doing a live blog of the unfolding events. And they are moving fast now as everyone tries to cover their arse.

Shares in News International plummet.

Coulsen to be arrested. Plus a second arrest of a senior journalist from The News of the World.

[Magda Hassan]

Owen Bowcott has been looking into claims from the media lawyer Mark Stephens that the News of the World closure might enable a liquidator to shred a backlog of potentially incriminating emails and documents.

"Why would the liquidator want to keep [the records]?" Stephens told the news service Reuters. "Minimizing liability is the liquidator's job."
But the London insolvency solicitor Rodney Hylton-Potts dismissed the idea as legally implausible. "In a liquidation, a liquidator takes over all the books and records but that does not affect the obligations of a liquidator or a director to bear in mind any criminal inquiry," he said.
"The leading case in this is Enron, where the accountants, Arthur Anderson, sent around an email saying that they should shred things. They were severely criticised for that and it finished the [accountancy] firm.
"We know there are police inquiries going on into the News of the World and anybody who removed records now would be personally liable. It would be perverting the course of justice and a crime. I don't think liquidation will make any difference [to the firms records].
"Indeed, the News of the World policy since January has been to cooperate with the police and in a solvent liquidation [like the NoW], the liquidator has a duty to follow the company's policy."


From the Guardian live blog.

[Peter Lemkin]

It seems to be spreading to other newspapers and pols, as well as the police.....may it destroy Murdoch!...and all his ilk and puppets. It is really ironic, the Brits have an image....of propriety and reserve...but it is just a false front. I forget what famous British Politician said 'Gentlemen do NOT read other gentleman's mail!' HA! :lol:

Good overview of the whole several year story on DemocracyNow!

By the bye....ever see a photo of his wife....there is hope for me still....if I could only find a few spare billion...