Phone hacking scandal deepens

[David Guyatt]

No matter how he may have wriggled Rebecca free with a lousy prosecution case, Rupe's US empire may now be in jeopardy.

Phone hacking exclusive: The News of the World, the army's IRA mole and more questions for Rupert Murdoch



Phone records of IRA terror informant went to News International

TOM HARPER


Sunday 29 June 2014

Detectives investigating possible corporate charges against Rupert Murdoch's media empire have obtained evidence to suggest that News International paid private detectives to unlawfully access the phone records of a leading IRA mole who lives under the protection of the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Senior Scotland Yard officers are analysing an invoice originally seized from a private investigator by the Metropolitan Police in 2007. The document which dates from the time of the discredited original phone-hacking investigation bills News International £850 for "Scappaticci phone records".
At the time the invoice was submitted, in April 2006, a senior News of the World executive had allegedly commissioned private detectives to find Freddie Scappaticci, Britain's top agent inside the IRA who was known by the codename "Stakeknife". David Cameron's former director of communications Andy Coulson was the newspaper's editor at the time. Last week, he was convicted of conspiracy to hack mobile phones.
It is understood the explicit request to be paid for obtaining confidential phone records makes the invoice unique amongst the files held by the Metropolitan Police (Met) and central to possible corporate charges. The request is effectively asking, in black-and-white, to be compensated for a criminal offence.
Given the sensitivities around Scappaticci, it is not clear why Scotland Yard failed to take any action against the News of the Worldor the private investigator when detectives seized the invoice in 2007. At the time, police chiefs were insisting criminality at the newspaper was confined to "one rogue reporter", Clive Goodman, who was jailed for phone-hacking in 2007.
Scappaticci named in the 2006 invoice
The private investigator cannot be named for legal reasons, but, to clarify, he is not Glenn Mulcaire, convicted in 2007 in the original phone hacking trial. When The Independent on Sunday approached the unnamed investigator, he made the astonishing claim that the private phone records were obtained via a police source. Despite his involvement in the attempted compromise of one of the British Army's most sensitive assets, the private investigator said he was confident that he would not face any action.
"Nothing we have to worry about," he said. "If they are giving [us] stuff, they are giving [us] paperwork, who cares? That is their risk nothing for us nothing for us..." Later he added: "But if I was one of their bosses, I would sack 'em on the spot. 'You can't be trusted mate. Bye!'"
The private investigator, who has a criminal record, said the phone records belonged to Scappaticci's wife, who was thought to have stayed in Northern Ireland while her husband was in the witness protection scheme in the UK. The private detective said the News of the World was trying to track the Army informant's whereabouts "on the mainland". He said they managed to "turn round" a possible number to a phone box in Liverpool which they believed could be used by Scappaticci.
The IoS asked the private investigator whether he was worried he may have "committed any illegal acts by accessing that information from the police source then honing in on the landline number to the phone box". He replied: "Yeah, yeah. Not worried about that, not worried about that at all."
Andy Coulson was The News of the World's editor at the time
Scotland Yard failed initially to take any action over the Scappaticci compromise. However, the Met has taken a much greater interest in its implications since August last year after a concerned third party emailed it to Commander Neil Basu, who has overall charge of the myriad investigations into News International.
The source was summoned to New Scotland Yard, London, where he was debriefed by Commander Basu, Detective Chief Superintendent Gordon Briggs and a senior Met lawyer. The invoice has also been emailed to Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Committee.
Yesterday Mr Vaz said: "It is clear we have not reached the end of the revelations relating to hacking.
"The Prime Minister promised that on the conclusion of the criminal investigation into phone hacking a full investigation in to police involvement would be commenced. That time is drawing near and preparation for Leveson 2 must be started now. I will be writing to the PM to ask what steps he is proposing and what his timetable is for the next inquiry which he rightly promised."
Last week, Coulson was convicted of conspiracy to hack mobile phones. Five other News of the World journalists pleaded guilty to similar offences. After an eight-month trial that made headlines around the world, former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks was acquitted of four charges.
Gerson Zweifach, News Corp lawyer (AP)
However, the conviction of such a senior figure as Coulson has raised the possibility that News International now rebranded News UK could face a corporate charge, which may have serious consequences for the ability of the parent company News Corp to operate in the United States. The investigation into News UK as a "corporate suspect" caused pandemonium at the upper echelons of the Murdoch media empire when they learnt of the development two years ago.
Shortly after the company was informed it was under suspicion in May 2012, executives in the US ordered that the company dramatically scale back its co-operation with the Met. A News Corp analysis of the effects of a corporate charge, produced in New York, said the consequences could "kill the corporation, and 46,000 jobs would be in jeopardy".
Lawyers for the media giant pleaded with the Met and the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute the company, saying it would not be in the "public interest" to put thousands of jobs at risk.
Gerson Zweifach, group general counsel of News Corp, flew to London for emergency talks with the Met in 2012. According to Scotland Yard, he told police: "Crappy governance is not a crime. The US authorities' reaction would put the whole business at risk, as licences would be at risk."
The MoD has never confirmed or denied whether Scappaticci was "Stakeknife". He has always denied the claims. However, General Sir John Wilsey, a former commander of the British Army in Northern Ireland, was once secretly recorded describing Scappaticci as "our most important secret". "He was a golden egg, something that was very important to the Army," he said. "We were terribly cagey about Fred."
The MoD is mounting an unprecedented legal bid for secrecy in a High Court action against Scappaticci, who was said to be protected by the British state despite his suspected involvement in the deaths of dozens of loyalists, policemen and civilians. The ex-wife of another IRA informant is suing Freddie Scappaticci, along with the MoD and police, for alleged false imprisonment in 1994. The MoD and Police Service of Northern Ireland are seeking Closed Material Procedures, that would deny her lawyers access to material.
Paper trail
2003 Freddie Scappaticci widely reported to be the British Army's leading mole in the IRA's internal security unit known as the "Nutting Squad".
April 2006 A private investigator working for the News of the World sends invoice to News International for "Scappaticci phone records".
January 2007 Former NOTW royal editor Glenn Mulcaire jailed for phone-hacking.
February 2007 Met officers seize invoice in raid on private detective.
2006-2011 In the face of widespread evidence, Met maintains criminality at News of the World confined to "one rogue reporter" convicted of phone-hacking.
August 2013 "Scappaticci" invoice emailed to Commander Neil Basu.
June 2014 Former editor Andy Coulson found guilty of phone-hacking. Scotland Yard continues investigation into corporate offences at News International.

[David Guyatt]

The trial was, for me, a farce, with the outcome being entirely satisfactory to the prosecution - one man get's a prison sentence and the rest walk free -- and the real story gets kicked under the carpet.

Phew! That was a close call they al whisper to each other. Champagne corks pop all round. The state covered it's arse again.

Phone hacking: Met had the evidence. How will it explain five years of failure?

Claims by senior officers that Operation Caryatid left 'no stone unturned' look set to haunt police force in light of last week's trial

• 
  
• • Nick Davies
    
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 2 July 2014 19.58 BST
    

Police officers patrol outside News International's offices in London on the day the last News of the World edition was printed in 2011. Photograph: Kerim Okten/EPA

It is not only David Cameron and Rupert Murdoch who are caught in the sticky web of the phone-hacking scandal. Scotland Yard too remains tangled in troubling questions revived by evidence disclosed in the Old Bailey trial that ended last week.
The questions remain unanswered because while the Yard's leadership has run a sprawling inquiry into allegations of crime by journalists and public officials, it has opted not to commission any kind of investigation into what went wrong under its own roof.
All the questions revolve around Scotland Yard's five years of failure to deal with allegations of crime in Murdoch's newsrooms before a new inquiry, Operation Weeting, finally took on the job. The scale of the Yard's failure to investigate or to disclose what was known was writ large in the evidence Weeting supplied to the Old Bailey trial.
While the original inquiry named only eight victims of Glenn Mulcaire's phone hacking, Weeting found Mulcaire's own handwritten notes suggested he had targeted 6,349 people either to intercept their voicemail or to "blag" their confidential data. The original inquiry led to just two arrests. Weeting and its offshoots have arrested or interviewed under caution some 210 people.
The central question is whether that failure was in any way connected to the Yard's links with Murdoch's UK company, then known as News International; or to any personal links between Yard officers and Murdoch employees. Fragments of new evidence from the trial and from Guardian inquiries raise more questions. They fall into two timeframes.
Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire was jailed for phone hacking. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PAThe first covers the period from January 2006 to January 2007 when the Yard ran Operation Caryatid, the original inquiry into a complaint from Buckingham Palace that somebody was listening to the voicemail messages of the royal household. On 8 August 2006, Caryatid arrested the News of the World's royal editor, Clive Goodman, and the paper's specialist phone-hacker, Glenn Mulcaire.
At the Old Bailey trial, Goodman told the jury that within 48 hours of his arrest, he saw the start of a campaign to persuade him to say he was a "lone wolf" who had hacked the royal phones without the knowledge of anybody else at the paper and that nobody else from the paper was involved in any other hacking. This "lone wolf" theory was a lie, as the trial exposed in painful detail. It would also have been apointless lie in the event of any risk that Scotland Yard would arrest other journalists. No other journalists were arrested by Caryatid.
During the trial, Goodman claimed that, following his arrest, Andy Coulson on several occasions suggested that he was directly or indirectly in contact with a source who knew what the police were doing and who was suggesting that they did not want to "go any deeper than me and nobody wanted it to end up in a jail sentence." Coulson denied saying this. Even if he did, it is possible that he was misleading Goodman in an attempt to persuade him to plead guilty. The question is whether there really was a source who enabled Coulson to know what the police were planning.
Six weeks later, on 15 September, a News International lawyer emailed Coulson with a summary of information he said had been provided to Rebekah Brooks by "the cops". The email disclosed in unredacted form at the trial included an apparently accurate account of some of the evidence collected by Caryatid and the suggestion "they are not widening the case to include other NoW people but would do so if they got direct evidence". The email said that so far the only evidence found against journalists other than Goodman was circumstantial.
The trial heard that this message was written as a result of a meeting at the RAC Club in London between Brooks and a Caryatid officer, DCI Keith Surtees, who had been tasked to tell her that her phone had been hacked by Mulcaire and to invite her to make a statement for the prosecution. Brooks declined to do so. The question here is whether Surtees was instructed not simply to ask for her cooperation but also to give her a briefing about Caryatid's progress and intentions. The Independent Police Complaints Commission investigated and found that Surtees had done nothing wrong. Scotland Yard declined to answer Guardian questions about it.
At around this time, according to evidence at the Leveson inquiry, the Yard decided to close down Caryatid. The precise timing and justification for this decision are not known: it was not recorded in writing.
The effect of this was that there was no further inquiry into evidence gathered by Caryatid that appeared to implicate other NoW journalists; a breach of the Yard's undertaking to the Crown Prosecution Service that officers would ensure "all potential victims" were informed; and a failure to follow evidence which suggested the NoW may have been involved in making corrupt payments to police officers including some involved in the security of the royal family and of the Witness Protection Programme.
Clive Goodman, the former royal editor of the News of the World, arrives at the Old Bailey in March 2014. Photograph: Andrew Winning/ReutersIn November 2006, Goodman and Mulcaire pleaded guilty without implicating anybody else at the newspaper.
After examining this history in detail, Lord Justice Leveson concluded that the Caryatid team had made mistakes in handling victims of the hacking and had failed to follow leads to other perpetrators but had acted in good faith, primarily because officers had to deal with far more serious crime involving terrorist plots to commit mass murder. That conclusion is clearly well-founded. Specifically, there is no evidence that any Caryatid officer showed any fear or favour towards News International.
However, the objective fact is that Scotland Yard's conduct enabled News International's coverup to succeed. Here, there are two key questions. Why was the hacking inquiry not passed to another squad to be completed? And was that decision in any way influenced by a desire to placate Murdoch's company?
Scotland Yard has opted not to try to answer any of these questions.
The Guardian front page of 9 July 2009. Photograph: GuardianThe second timeframe runs from 9 July 2009, when the Guardian published its first story about the true scale of the hacking, to July 2011, when it disclosed that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked. During that time, Scotland Yard presented press, public and parliament with a version of events that has proved to be false.
This included repeated denials that the Yard held any evidence that Mulcaire had targeted the then deputy prime minister, John Prescott; repeated claims that detectives had approached all potential victims of Mulcaire's hacking; and claims they had pursued all available leads. All of these statements proved to be false.
The Yard also failed to disclose that Caryatid had been closed down without completing the original investigation; and that News International had obstructed officers' work.
The Old Bailey trial disclosed a new fragment of evidence that remains unexplained and unexplored. This involved the celebrity PR Max Clifford, who was one of the eight hacking victims and was named at the sentencing of Goodman and Mulcaire in January 2007. Soon after the Guardian's first story, in July 2009, Clifford sued the NoW on the basis that somebody at the paper must have conspired with Mulcaire to intercept his voicemail.
On 14 September 2009, a deputy master in the high court ordered Scotland Yard to disclose relevant evidence, including the notes Mulcaire had made as he targeted Clifford. The Yard said it would do so by 23 November.
The then acting deputy Metropolitan police commissioner, John Yates. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/ReutersOn 5 November, the assistant commissioner who had inherited responsibility for the hacking case, John Yates, dined at the Ivy with the then editor of the News of the World, Colin Myler. It's unclear exactly what was discussed at that dinner, but the Yard missed the deadline for disclosing Mulcaire's notes and, when they finally did so, on 7 December, the name of the NoW journalist who had tasked Mulcaire to hack Clifford had been blacked out, as had much of the rest of the notes.
The fragment of evidence disclosed at the Old Bailey trial concerned a meeting held at the NoW's east London office on 20 January 2010 to discuss the Clifford case. The jury were shown a record of the meeting. This noted that when the police disclosed their evidence on Clifford, "there was nothing there". The record then continued with a remark attributed to Myler: "CM said that Andy Hayman and John Yates had indicated to him previously that this was probably going to be the case."
Contacted by the Guardian recently, Myler declined to comment.
The first question here is whether that record is accurate. It may not be. Andy Hayman was the assistant commissioner during the first timeframe. He was responsible for Operation Caryatid although he had no day-to-day role in its conduct. But he had left Scotland Yard in December 2007. An investigation might establish whether Hayman had any means of discovering how the Yard was planning to respond to the order to disclose Mulcaire's notes about Clifford. Beyond the question of its accuracy, the record of that meeting raises questions. Why did Scotland Yard choose to redact Mulcaire's notes so heavily? The high court ordered a less redacted version, although the case was then aborted when Clifford accepted an offer from News International of guaranteed income of £600,000 plus his legal costs.
Did Hayman, Yates or anybody else at the Yard provided information about their handling of the case to Myler? Hayman and Yates declined to comment but Yates's friends say he would not have had access to the detail of the case and would not have disclosed anything improper.
Andy Hayman appears before Commons home affairs committee in 2011. Photograph: PaAs the Leveson inquiry heard, both Hayman and Yates were in the habit of sharing drinks and meals with journalists, including some from the News of the World. Coulson himself previously has said he was on "not unfriendly terms" with Hayman. Yates counted another senior journalist from the paper as a personal friend. The evidence of the social contact was disclosed at the Leveson inquiry. Leveson found that it had had no impact on decisions which they made and that, although the two men had made mistakes, they had acted with integrity. Both Hayman and Yates have also been criticised for public comments which they made about the extent of the hacking at the News of the World. This began as a reaction to the Guardian's first story, on Thursday 9 July, when Yates held a press conference outside Scotland Yard. He said he had been asked "to establish the facts" and went on to read a statement that challenged the core of the Guardian account and has since proved misleading. He said no further investigation was required. Two years later, when the scandal reached its climax, Yates apologised for his approach, saying he should have done more and that his decision not to reopen the investigation was "pretty crap".
In the background, after resigning from Scotland Yard, Hayman had gone to work for News International as a columnist for the Times, which bought the serial rights to his memoirs. Two days after Yates's statement, on 11 July, he published a Times column in which he said that Caryatid "had left no stone unturned". He did not say that the investigation had been closed down without completing the job.
He went on to say that Caryatid would have pursued "the slightest hint that others were involved". The Old Bailey trial disclosed that Caryatid had done the opposite, for example opting not to pursue evidence of the possible involvement of journalists Greg Miskiw and Neville Thurlbeck, who have since pleaded guilty to conspiring to intercept voicemail. Hayman told the Leveson inquiry that he had written his column from memory without having access to any of the original paperwork.
The following week, on 15 July, Hayman went to a leaving party for a senior NoW journalist from the News of the World, at the Century Club on Shaftesbury Avenue in London. One guest has told the Guardian Hayman approached Tim Toulmin, then director of the Press Complaints Commission, who was standing by the bar, and said words to the effect that: "I can't believe this Guardian thing. Such a lot of fuss about it. I have seen the file. There is nothing in there, just a handful of names."
In November, a PCC report accepted Goodman and Mulcaire were the only culprits and added that "the Guardian's stories did not quite live up to the dramatic billing they were initially given".
Over the two-year timeframe, Yates repeated his misleading version of events to two Commons select committees and visited the Guardian to complain to the editor, Alan Rusbridger, about the paper's coverage. Later, he threatened to sue the Guardian for publishing claims that he had misled parliament. Yates and Hayman specifically denied that Prescott had been a victim even though Caryatid in August 2006 had found evidence Mulcaire had been intercepting his voicemail from the phone of his special adviser, Joan Hammell.
The home affairs select committee criticised Hayman for his "cavalier attitude" towards his social contact with News International staff being investigated by his detectives and suggested this had "risked seriously undermining confidence in the impartiality of the police". They also accused him of "deliberate prevarication in order to mislead the committee".
Leveson found that Yates had adopted an "inappropriately dismissive and close-minded attitude" to the scandal and had been dogmatic and defensive in his comments.
Neither the select committee nor Leveson concluded Hayman, Yates or anybody else at Scotland Yard had let their judgment be influenced by contact with or fear of News International. Leveson concluded that although there had been "a series of poor decisions, poorly executed", there was no evidence to challenge the integrity of the senior police officers concerned.
On the specific questions raised by the new information from the Old Bailey trial, there is no evidence at all no phone records, no diaries, no internal memos, no expenses records, no interviews with the key players because Scotland Yard has failed to commission the inquiry which might have found it. The questions hang there, looking for an answer.

[David Guyatt]

The scapegoat get 18 months...

Andy Coulson sentenced for 18 months in phone hacking trial

Andy Coulson, the former No 10 communications director and News of the World editor, has been jailed for 18 months atfer being found guilty at the Old Bailey

Accused in the hacking trial, clockwise from top left: James Weatherup, Andy Coulson, Neville Thurlbeck, Greg Miskiw, Glenn Mulcaire








By Martin Evans, Crime Correspondent

12:38PM BST 04 Jul 2014



Andy Coulson has been jailed for 18 months after being found guilty of plotting to hack phones.

The former News of the World editor and Downing Street director of communications appeared at the Old Bailey alongside four former colleagues who were also sentenced.


[SUP]Andy Coulson arrives in court on Friday for sentencing (Paul Grover/The Telegraph)[/SUP]

Last week he was convicted of one count of conspiracy to intercept communications following an eight month trial.

Trial judge Mr Justice Saunders: "Mr Coulson has to take the major blame for the shame of phone hacking at the NotW.

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"He knew about it, he encouraged it when he should have stopped it."
The judge told the defendants: "I do not accept ignorance of the law provides any mitigation.
"The laws of protection are given to the rich, famous and powerful as to all."
Coulson's imprisonment signifies a spectacular fall from grace for the man who was once one of David Cameron's most trusted aides.

During the trial, which saw all the other defendants cleared, the jury heard how phone hacking was endemic at the News of the World under his editorship.
Journalists at the now defunct Sunday tabloid listened in to the voicemails of thousands of people ranging from politicians and celebrities to other journalists and even victims of crime.
The scandal caused national revulsion when in July 2011 it was revealed that the paper had even hacked the mobile phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
Coulson still faces further legal action after the Crown Prosecution Service announced there would be a retrial on charges of conspiracy to bribe public officials.
The decision came after the original jury failed to reach verdicts on four charges against him and former royal editor Clive Goodman.
News of the World news editor Greg Miskiw, 64, from Leeds; chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, 52, of Esher, Surrey; and news editor James Weatherup, 58, of Brentwood in Essex, were also sentenced today after all admitted one general count of conspiring together and with others to illegally access voicemails between October 2000 and August 2006.
Miskiw and Thurlbeck were each jailed for six months.
Weatherup was jailed for four months, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to do 200 hours unpaid community work.
Mulcaire was jailed for six months, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to do 200 hours unpaid community work.
According to Mulcaire's notes, Miskiw tasked him 1,500 times, Thurlbeck 261 times and Weatherup 157 times, the court heard.
Mr Justice Saunders told them: "All the defendants that I have to sentence, save for Mr Mulcaire, are distinguished journalists who had no need to behave as they did to be successful.
"They all achieved a great deal without resorting to the unlawful invasion of other people's privacy. Those achievements will now count for nothing.
"I accept that their reputations and their careers are irreparably damaged."
Weatherup and Mulcaire both declined to comment as they left the courtroom.

[Peter Lemkin]

When does Murdoch go on trial for telling them to hack phones [at least for allowing it on his watch]?!? :: ::hush:: :: ::

[Magda Hassan]

When does Murdoch go on trial for telling them to hack phones [at least for allowing it on his watch]?!? :: ::hush:: :: ::

When hell freezes over I'd say. Or when his love Rebekah does. It would be very satisfying though.

[Peter Lemkin]

When does Murdoch go on trial for telling them to hack phones [at least for allowing it on his watch]?!? :: ::hush:: :: ::

When hell freezes over I'd say. Or when his love Rebekah does. It would be very satisfying though.

Oh yes, forgot about his teflon-coated get-out-of-jail-free card. He got it for doing yeoman's service for the CIA in two of their OZ operations: Whitlam and Nugan-Hand. Later, he helped become a major part of their propaganda arm [and oddly got rich quickly].::bowtie::

[Magda Hassan]

When does Murdoch go on trial for telling them to hack phones [at least for allowing it on his watch]?!? :: ::hush:: :: ::

When hell freezes over I'd say. Or when his love Rebekah does. It would be very satisfying though.

Oh yes, forgot about his teflon-coated get-out-of-jail-free card. He got it for doing yeoman's service for the CIA in two of their OZ operations: Whitlam and Nugan-Hand. Later, he helped become a major part of their propaganda arm [and oddly got rich quickly].::bowtie::

I can only imagine the sort of information he would have gathered over the years on all sorts of people....::hush::

[Peter Lemkin]

When does Murdoch go on trial for telling them to hack phones [at least for allowing it on his watch]?!? :: ::hush:: :: ::

When hell freezes over I'd say. Or when his love Rebekah does. It would be very satisfying though.

Oh yes, forgot about his teflon-coated get-out-of-jail-free card. He got it for doing yeoman's service for the CIA in two of their OZ operations: Whitlam and Nugan-Hand. Later, he helped become a major part of their propaganda arm [and oddly got rich quickly].::bowtie::

I can only imagine the sort of information he would have gathered over the years on all sorts of people....::hush::

Ah, the old 'Harriet' Hoover gambit.....too much dirt on all but his bosses in Top Intelligence to be put a finger upon, legally....got it.:hock::

[David Guyatt]

Whoops. Wasn't there just a trial? Was this heard during that trial or not entered into evidence? If this is true, it is a criminal offence anyway.

Rebekah Brooks aware her paper was undermining Met's murder inquiry,' claims former detective



Ex-chief superintendent, Dave Cook, met with the then News of the World editor in 2002 after re-opening the investigation into the 1987 murder

JAMES CUSICK

POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

Friday 18 July 2014

A former Scotland Yard detective has claimed he held a meeting in 2002 with the former News of the World editor, Rebekah Brooks, and told her a surveillance operation ordered by News International had tried to "undermine" a re-opened murder investigation.

Dave Cook, a former detective chief superintendent, said he had been told the NOTW had been offering assistance to those suspected of the Morgan murder. "They were trying to undermine me and the investigation into the murder of Daniel Morgan, it's as simple as that," Mr Cook told the BBC. "I brought this to the attention of Rebekah Brooks. I had the meeting… She chose to do nothing about it."
Mr Cook had not previously spoken openly about his 2002 meeting with Mrs Brooks, the former chief executive of News International.
He had appeared on the BBC's Crimewatch in 2002 and announced he was heading a new investigation into the 1987 killing of Daniel Morgan. But shortly after the programme was aired, Mr Cook said he noticed unmarked vans parked outside his London home and discovered the vehicles were leased to Rupert Murdoch's UK print division. Concerned for his safety, he claims he took his children and drove away in the family car. One of the parked vehicles followed him, he said.
When a photographer was confronted by the police about the surveillance, he claimed to be part of a NOTW "kiss n' tell" operation trying to find out if Mr Cook was having an affair with a woman called Jacqui Hames.
But Ms Hames was Mr Cook's wife, the mother of his children and they had lived together for years. The two main suspects of the re-opened murder inquiry were involved with a south London private investigation firm that regularly fed stories and confidential police information to the NOTW.
Daniel Morgan, who was murdered in 1987 (PA)
Details of the surveillance operation have previously been given to the Leveson Inquiry by Ms Hames, who had been a detective and a presenter on Crimewatch.
Scotland Yard's 2006 investigation into phone hacking knew that the private investigator used by the NOTW as a specialist hacker, Glenn Mulcaire, had been tasked by the tabloid's former news editor, Greg Miskiw, to compile a dossier on Mr Cook.
Miskiw was jailed for phone hacking last month. Also last month, Mrs Brooks, her husband Charlie, and her former secretary were all found not guilty of the charges against them following a lengthy trial at the Old Bailey.
Mrs Brooks told a parliamentary committee in 2011 that her recollection of the meeting was that it involved a discussion on a different topic.
The BBC said their reporters tried to contact Mrs Brooks but had so far received no response.
A Home Office-ordered independent review, headed by Baroness Nuala O'Loan, is currently looking into how Mr Morgan's family were treated by the police and the criminal justice system in the years that followed the 1987 murder.

[Peter Lemkin]

It seems to me that this may be not so much corrupt and unethical practices in the media and between the media and both police and pols - but rather the use of cut-outs [in this case media outlets] to do the 'business' and propaganda of the intelligence agencies and corrupt political class.