Phone hacking - Leveson enquiry via Andy Coulson and Cameron

Post by **TonyGosling** » Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:15 am

Tension rises in Syria as armed rebels fight with the government & Russians say they will not support Western intervention. Do NATO &/or Israel have special forces provoking war by conducting military operations inside Iran? Forest of Dean Wilderness environmental education centre in Mitcheldean occupied by Tom Forest & Reclaim The Fields, who want to stop Gloucestershire County Council selling it off. Pentagon commissioning research to manipulate social networking, Propaganda 2. Journalistic ethics in the spotlight at the Leveson Enquiry but is it just a spectacle for the public? Is the media serving the public with Magdalena Krupa from Bristol’s Ujima 98fm, Optimist World site recommended. Discussion about consolidation of commercial local radio stations with BCfm’s station manager Phil Gibbons. James Murdoch & Jeremy Hunt and the Conservative Party colluding two years ago to cut the BBC. Granville Williams from the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom on changes to commercial ‘local’ radio and threats to BBC local radio. Sabine McNeill from Forum For Stable Currencies and Victims Unite about the money scam and miscarriages of justice.
http://bcfm.org.uk/2012/01/20/17/friday ... e-55/13733

scienceplease 2 · Post by **scienceplease 2** » Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:02 pm

TonyGosling wrote:Pentagon commissioning research to manipulate social networking, Propaganda 2. Journalistic ethics in the spotlight at the Leveson Enquiry but is it just a spectacle for the public?

Absolutely.

What are they covering up?
- News International COMPLETE knowledge of phone hacking
- Cameron's moronic decision to hire Coulson (and missing DV security vetting)
- the conspiracy to cut back the BBC
- Police being paid by newspapers
- Police being bribed in other ways by newspapers (giving them jobs etc)
- The ability to locate mobile phone users in real time
- The use of phone tapping as well as phone hacking!

from http://www.phone-spy.co.uk/

SIGMA SPY TOOLS

The Best Solution for Spying on Cellphones!
Now you can listen to calls and read SMS from other phones directly on your phone using Sigma Spy Tools™. A variety of solutions is provided, starting from the most basic mobile spy tool up to the most advanced spy phone tool which also includes Call Interception, SMS forwarding and Location Tracking. You can spy on phones using your choice of package. All packages are easily installed and simple to use.

Meanwhile, News International pay out after deliberately deleting emails and accepting payments "as-if" they were guilty but actually not admitting guilt! (Sounds like a cover-up to me!)

The claimants alleged that senior employees and directors at... News International... knew their journalists were engaging in illegal practices, and that the group sought to deliberately deceive investigators and destroyed evidence.

"[NI]... agreed that the damages to be paid to claimants should be assessed as if this was the case."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/ja ... nt-victims

Post by **TonyGosling** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 2:38 pm

Coulson put Scotland's most trusted politician behind bars, now he's out.

Scottish prison service tried to gag me, says Tommy Sheridan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012 ... sfeed=true
Solidarity party leader says he was asked to sign gagging order as he is released from prison a year after being jailed for perjury
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 January 2012 18.16 GMT
Prison executives have dropped "illegal" plans to ban the socialist leader Tommy Sheridan from meeting the media and making speeches after his release from jail, his lawyer has said.
Sheridan walked free from Castle Huntly open prison on Monday morning, a year after being jailed for perjury during his libel trial against the News of the World, to live at home under curfew and wearing an electronic tag until July.
The Solidarity party leader had been poised to issue proceedings for a judicial review later on Monday, claiming he had originally been asked to sign early release papers with an explicit gagging order that prevented him speaking to the media for the next six months.

TonyGosling wrote:Sheridan on trial – but it's Coulson in the dock
Jonathan Brown sees former News of the World editor defend himself against accusations of complicity in phone-hacking
Friday, 10 December 2010
Shortly after 2.30pm yesterday it was the turn of defence witness 21 to swear the oath at Glasgow High Court in the perjury trail of Tommy Sheridan.
After a morning spent embroiled in the minutiae of the internal procedures of the executive committee of the Scottish Socialist Party, for the jury, the packed press benches and dozens of members of the public who have sat through all 38 days of evidence so far, there emerged into the witness stand a visitor from the lofty world of Westminster power politics.
Dressed in a grey suit and navy blue tie, Andrew Edward Coulson, 42, was asked twice to confirm his position as director of communications at Downing Street. Over the next 45 minutes he faced a volley of questions from the former socialist firebrand who is representing himself in the proceedings......
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 55932.html

Disco_Destroyer · Post by **Disco_Destroyer** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 4:17 pm

Two UK Murdoch journalists in apparent suicide bids
By Georgina Prodhan | Reuters – 17 hrs ago
http://news.yahoo.com/two-murdoch-journ ... 11969.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Two senior journalists working for Rupert Murdoch's News International have apparently attempted suicide as pressure mounts at the scandal-hit publisher of the now-defunct News of the World.
Three sources close to the company told Reuters on Tuesday the two journalists at the Sun daily appeared to have tried to take their own lives. Investigations sparked by a phone-hacking scandal continue to expose dubious practices by present and past employees.
Eleven current and former staff of the Sun, Britain's best-selling daily tabloid, have been arrested this year on suspicion of bribing police or civil servants for tip-offs.
Their arrests have come as a result of information provided to the police by the Management and Standards Committee (MSC), a body set up by parent company News Corp to facilitate police investigations and liaise with the courts.
The work of the MSC, which was set up to be independent of the conglomerate's British newspaper arm News International, has caused bitterness among staff, many of whom feel betrayed by an employer they have loyally served.
"People think that they've been thrown under a bus," one News International employee told Reuters. "They're beyond angry - there's an utter sense of betrayal, not just with the organisation but with a general lynch-mob hysteria."
News International is facing multiple criminal investigations and civil court cases as well as a public inquiry into press standards after long-simmering criticism of its practices came to a head last July.
Politicians once close to Murdoch, including Prime Minister David Cameron, turned their backs on him and demanded answers after the Guardian newspaper revealed the News of the World had hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
Police officer Sue Akers, who is heading three criminal inquiries into News International, said last week there appeared to have been "a culture of illegal payments" at the Sun.
Staff at the tabloid have been under additional pressure for the past two weeks because they have also had to produce a Sunday paper, hastily announced by Murdoch to replace the News of the World.
News International has increased the level of psychiatric help available to employees to help them cope.
(editing by Tim Pearce and Robert Woodward)

Post by **TonyGosling** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 7:09 pm

TV hacking claims pile pressure on James Murdoch
By Georgina Prodhan | Reuters – 1 hr 49 mins ago
http://news.yahoo.com/uk-lawmaker-urges ... 57097.html
LONDON (Reuters) - A British lawmaker is to demand that the UK television watchdog probe new hacking claims against News Corp, piling more pressure on BSkyB Chairman James Murdoch, whose fitness to own a broadcast license is already under scrutiny.
A BBC Panorama documentary broadcast on Monday alleged NDS, a pay-TV smartcard maker recently sold by News Corp for $5 billion, hired a consultant to post the encryption codes of ITV Digital, a key rival of the then Sky TV, on his website.
Widespread piracy after the online publication of the codes contributed to the 2002 collapse of ITV Digital, which had been set up by the parties that later formed ITV, Britain's leading free-to-air commercial broadcaster, in 1998.
BSkyB, now Britain's dominant pay-TV broadcaster, is 39 percent owned by News Corp. Murdoch sits on NDS's board.
NDS said in a statement: "It is wrong to claim that NDS has ever been in the possession of any codes for the purpose of promoting hacking or piracy."
News Corp said: "NDS has consistently denied any wrongdoing to Panorama and we fully accept their assurances."
Regulator Ofcom is already investigating both Murdoch and News Corp in the light of new evidence emerging from probes into phone and computer hacking and bribery at the News of the World tabloid, which News Corp shut down last July.
"These allegations, if true, are the most serious yet and I am referring the matter to Ofcom, who have a duty to investigate as part of their fit and proper test," member of parliament Tom Watson said of the claims made in the BBC's Panorama program.
"If what Panorama says is true, it suggests a global conspiracy to undermine a great British company, ITV Digital," he told Reuters on Tuesday.
An Ofcom spokesman declined to comment on the specific allegations but said the regulator would consider "all relevant evidence" as part of its ongoing duty to be satisfied that the owner of the license was fit and proper.
Watson is known for his dogged questioning of James Murdoch and his father Rupert for their role in the phone-hacking affair, notoriously comparing James to a Mafia boss when he appeared at a parliamentary hearing investigating the hacking.
The committee has been due since early this year to present a report based on its investigations, which is expected to be critical of James Murdoch and may determine whether he has a future in Britain.
Watson said the report was now unlikely to be published before the Easter holiday on April 8. He said the new revelations were unlikely to affect the committee's work, since they were not part of its remit.
James Murdoch was not involved in News Corp's UK newspaper operations when the phone-hacking took place at the News of the World but is under scrutiny for failing to uncover the scale of the problem when he took charge there shortly afterwards.
Murdoch is now based in New York following his promotion to deputy chief operating officer of News Corp last year, and is focusing on the conglomerate's pay-TV businesses. He severed all ties with the UK newspapers earlier this month.
"There's no suggestion anywhere that Sky or News Corp knew what NDS was doing," broadcaster and media consultant Steve Hewlett told Reuters.
"But if it all turns out to be true, then you have a News Corp company once again behaving in ways that are less than proper," he said.

APPETITE FOR RISK
The Panorama documentary featured an interview with Lee Gibling, the owner of a satellite hacking website, who said NDS funded the expansion of his site and had him distribute ITV Digital's codes.
NDS said it never used or intended to use the site for any illegal purpose, and said it had paid Gibling for his expertise so that information from the site could be used to track and catch hackers and pirates.
NDS also said it was common for companies in the pay-TV industry to discover one another's encryption codes - a view endorsed by Adam Laurie, a security researcher with UK-based Aperture Labs, which specializes in access control.
"It's possible they cracked them themselves in order to test the security of the algorithms," he told Reuters. "To compare yours against others you have to test them and there's a chance you'll succeed."
ITV Digital was beset by issues from the start, including internal competition between its shareholders, a lack of premium content, and a price war with BSkyB, which had been shut out of the venture by the regulator.
"It was a question of who's got the deepest pockets and the biggest appetite for risk, and it wasn't ITV," said Hewlett, who was working for an ITV company at the time.
"It's a complex picture, but to say that ITV Digital failed because of piracy, I think, is not correct."
NDS, whose technology is used by BSkyB and News Corp pay-TV operators including Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, was sold by News Corp and private equity firm Permira to Cisco this month.
The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2012.
Cisco had no immediate comment on whether the new allegations posed any risk to the deal. NDS said Cisco had been fully briefed on past allegations and court cases.
NDS was sued in a $3 billion lawsuit in 2002 by Canal Plus, which had supplied the scrambling technology for ITV Digital and accused NDS of extracting the code from the cards and leaking it onto the Internet.
Canal Plus dropped the action in 2003 when News Corp bought Italian satellite pay TV company Telepiu from Canal Plus's then debt-stricken owner Vivendi, renaming it Sky Italia.
U.S. satellite TV provider EchoStar, which had tried to join the Canal Plus suit, then sued NDS in 2003 in a similar case. NDS was cleared of the main charges and EchoStar won a tiny fraction of the $2 billion in damages it had sought.
Earlier this month, NDS was awarded $19 million in damages after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition by EchoStar and Swiss digital security company Kudelski over their allegations that NDS had abetted piracy in the United States.
In Italy, a long-running pay-TV piracy trial is still ongoing. One of the defendants, Davide Rossi, says he was collecting intelligence on behalf of an NDS security officer.
NDS said on Tuesday: "NDS wholly refutes the allegation that Mr Rossi acted illegally on behalf of NDS. NDS is not a defendant in the trial in Sicily or any other."
(Editing by Erica Billingham and David Cowell)

Husq · Post by **Husq** » Thu Mar 29, 2012 7:08 pm

Rupert Murdoch hits back over sabotage claims:

"So bad, easy to hit back hard, which preparing," the 81-year-old tweeted.

Writing on Twitter, Rupert Murdoch took a clear swipe at the BBC, asserting "enemies many different agendas, but worst old toffs and right wingers who still want last century's status quo with their monopolies".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17547568

Looks interesting.

Post by **TonyGosling** » Wed May 02, 2012 9:31 pm

Daniel Obachike Meets With Operation Weeting Detectives
http://www.the4thbomb.com/when-operatio ... tleblower/

Posted by Daniel7:7 on 4/29/12 • Categorized as Daniel Obachike,Met complaint ref: SCD12/4/2012/SA,metroplitan police,Phone hacking,Whistleblower

I attended a meeting at Operation Weetings HQ with two detectives investigating phone hacking as I may have been phone hacked in the same way that Sheila Henry, mother of my friend Christian Small who died on 7/7 & some of his friends and family were.

After the meeting, as we made our way to the groundfloor in the lift I was verbally abused by one of the detectives who in a condescending sneering tone asked me if ‘I was on drugs‘ to the mild amusement of his colleague. I was shocked by this. Then to add insult to injury as I exited the security turnstiles I was told by his colleague they did not want to ‘faff around‘ with my inquiry and handed the letter listing the details I’d asked them to check against those on the NotW/Mulcaire notes back to me.

Formal complaint lodged at Scotland Yard and Directorate of Professional Standards

I lodged a formal complaint sending copies to Scotland Yard and their Department of Professional Standards about the conduct and insulting behaviour of detectives failing in their duty of service to members of the public. On the 11th of April 2012 I was invited to meet with Detective Inspector Setter at Jubilee House who’d been asked by Scotland Yard to resolve this locally. He asked me to sign a piece of paper saying it was dealt with to my satisfaction and a misunderstanding on my part but I declined this as his explainations for all 4 points raised only trivialised what were serious matters.

I’ve since been informed by Atkins Thomson Solicitors acting for me that Operation Weeting investigators say they found no trace for any of my details in the NotW/Mulcaire Notes for the year 2006 but the Met Police’s letter added that this did not mean that at sometime in the future they may discover or uncover evidence to the contrary. To me this sounds inconclusive. Maybe its something to do with the fact that I asked for the years 2004-2006 to be checked or am among the 17 phonehack victims DS Sue Akers told the Leveson Inquiry they removed for ‘operational reasons’.
Infact, it was while I was giving evidence at the Leveson Inquiry on the 25th of January that I told the Lord Justice I thought it best not to say much at this stage as it may prejudice the inquiries I’m making to Operation Weeting.

Legal action in the case of abuse by two Metropolitan Police detectives is pending.

scienceplease 2 · Post by **scienceplease 2** » Thu May 03, 2012 7:23 am

TonyGosling wrote:Daniel Obachike Meets With Operation Weeting Detectives
http://www.the4thbomb.com/when-operatio ... tleblower/

Posted by Daniel7:7 on 4/29/12 • Categorized as Daniel Obachike,Met complaint ref: SCD12/4/2012/SA,metroplitan police,Phone hacking,Whistleblower

I attended a meeting at Operation Weetings HQ with two detectives investigating phone hacking as I may have been phone hacked in the same way that Sheila Henry, mother of my friend Christian Small who died on 7/7 & some of his friends and family were.

After the meeting, as we made our way to the groundfloor in the lift I was verbally abused by one of the detectives who in a condescending sneering tone asked me if ‘I was on drugs‘ to the mild amusement of his colleague. I was shocked by this. Then to add insult to injury as I exited the security turnstiles I was told by his colleague they did not want to ‘faff around‘ with my inquiry and handed the letter listing the details I’d asked them to check against those on the NotW/Mulcaire notes back to me.

Formal complaint lodged at Scotland Yard and Directorate of Professional Standards

I lodged a formal complaint sending copies to Scotland Yard and their Department of Professional Standards about the conduct and insulting behaviour of detectives failing in their duty of service to members of the public. On the 11th of April 2012 I was invited to meet with Detective Inspector Setter at Jubilee House who’d been asked by Scotland Yard to resolve this locally. He asked me to sign a piece of paper saying it was dealt with to my satisfaction and a misunderstanding on my part but I declined this as his explainations for all 4 points raised only trivialised what were serious matters.

I’ve since been informed by Atkins Thomson Solicitors acting for me that Operation Weeting investigators say they found no trace for any of my details in the NotW/Mulcaire Notes for the year 2006 but the Met Police’s letter added that this did not mean that at sometime in the future they may discover or uncover evidence to the contrary. To me this sounds inconclusive. Maybe its something to do with the fact that I asked for the years 2004-2006 to be checked or am among the 17 phonehack victims DS Sue Akers told the Leveson Inquiry they removed for ‘operational reasons’.
Infact, it was while I was giving evidence at the Leveson Inquiry on the 25th of January that I told the Lord Justice I thought it best not to say much at this stage as it may prejudice the inquiries I’m making to Operation Weeting.

Legal action in the case of abuse by two Metropolitan Police detectives is pending.

Probably systemic racism...

Post by **TonyGosling** » Fri May 04, 2012 7:52 pm

Getting a bit nervous are we Dave?

Leveson Inquiry: David Cameron granted right to see Andy Coulson's evidence in advance
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... vance.html
David Cameron has made a successful last-minute bid to be allowed sight of Andy Coulson’s witness statement before his former communications chief gives evidence to the Leveson Inquiry next week.

David Cameron's late Leveson application reveals No 10 is fretting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/ma ... pplication
Demand by leader and seven other ministers to see evidence early is attempt to prevent another Jeremy Hunt fiasco

scienceplease 2 · Post by **scienceplease 2** » Sat May 26, 2012 9:17 pm

George Osborne's closest political aide secretly gave News Corp information about the likely contents of the Government's first budget, it was revealed last night.

Email correspondence, released by the Leveson Inquiry, shows that Mr Osborne's most senior political adviser in the Treasury, Rupert Harrison, sent Fred Michel a message all but confirming that the Government was not intending to introduce VAT on newspapers.

As one of the largest publishers in the country, News International (owned by News Corp) had a key interest in ensuring that extending VAT to newspaper sales was not included in Mr Osborne's plans to help pay off the deficit.

In the email, sent just four days before Mr Osborne stood up to deliver his budget, Mr Harrison writes: "Would be good to meet up after the Budget. Obviously I can't really comment on budget policy decisions now, but I would just point out we have said nothing over the last few weeks or months that would suggest any extension of VAT."

The message is one of a number of emails and text exchanges between the men which were recovered from Mr Michel's phone.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 89336.html

Post by **TonyGosling** » Wed May 30, 2012 11:29 pm

Coulson has been charged with perjury tonight
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 03896.html
Tommy Sheridan, leader of the Scottish Socialist party, which Coulson destroyed, may be vindicated?

Covered this story in September last year.
Over 100 detetives now investigating News International: Did Murdoch stooge perjure himself to put popular Scottish Socialist leader Tommy Sheridan in jail as ‘enemy of the state’? Strathclyde police’s Operation Rubicon;
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/54555

scienceplease 2 · Post by **scienceplease 2** » Thu May 31, 2012 9:58 am

TonyGosling wrote:Coulson has been charged with perjury tonight
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 03896.html
Tommy Sheridan, leader of the Scottish Socialist party, which Coulson destroyed, may be vindicated?

Covered this story in September last year.

Over 100 detetives now investigating News International: Did Murdoch stooge perjure himself to put popular Scottish Socialist leader Tommy Sheridan in jail as ‘enemy of the state’? Strathclyde police’s Operation Rubicon;
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/54555

Brooks and Coulson going to get their Karmic Retribution - of course, their corruption and phone TAPPING and Computer Hacking will not be prosecuted but hey...

Now how are they going to pin convictions onto the Murdochs? Or will it just be the case that Levison will faintly damm them and they lose control of NI?

Post by **TonyGosling** » Tue Jul 24, 2012 9:58 pm

Priceless
Leveson enquiry witnesses' Can't/Don't remember/recall scores

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/20 ... arges-live

scienceplease 2 · Post by **scienceplease 2** » Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:44 pm

Of course, Rupert resigning his directorship on NI immediately before ALL his underlings get charged with phone hacking seems like "news management". Was he tipped off?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-k ... 01929.html

On Monday, we learned that Rupert Murdoch had resigned from the boards of a number of News Corp. subsidiaries, including News International Group, Times Newspaper Holdings and News Corp. Investments. These companies oversee British newspapers the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times. They also oversaw the News of the World before it was shuttered last summer as evidence of widespread phone hacking emerged.

On Tuesday, U.K. authorities leveled charges against former News International executives Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, who held top positions at the company. The two are among eight News International associates facing charges on 19 counts of conspiracy over the phone-hacking scandal. They and others allegedly tapped the cellphone conversations of hundreds of people -- from celebrities and politicians to innocent crime victims -- and then sought to cover up their actions.

What's not yet known is whether the two developments are related: Did Murdoch decide to distance himself from his British newspaper subsidiaries after being tipped off that charges were imminent?

Also strange how James Murdoch has avoided a tap on the shoulder...

Post by **TonyGosling** » Fri Nov 02, 2012 12:26 pm

well, she would wouldn't she
Common Purpose graduate perchance?

Operation Elveden: DCI April Casburn pleads not guilty

Counter-terrorism officer denies charges of misconduct in public office over allegations that she offered information to a tabloid
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/0 ... burn-court?

Lisa O'Carroll - guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 November 2012 11.23 GMT

DCI April Casburn pleaded not guilty to charges of misconduct in public office. Photograph: Graham Whitby Boot/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

One of Scotland Yard's most senior counter-terrorism officers has pleaded not guilty to charges of misconduct in public office, after allegedly offering to provide the News of the World with information about a police inquiry into phone hacking at the paper.

Detective chief inspector April Casburn, who works in specialist operations at the Metropolitan police, is accused of contacting the now defunct tabloid newspaper on 11 September, 2010.

It is alleged that Casburn "wilfully misconducted herself to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public's trust in that office".

Casburn, 53, of Chelmsford, appeared at a plea hearing before Mr Justice Fulford at the Old Bailey on Friday morning and spoke only to confirm her name and to plead not guilty to the charges read out in court. She has been released on unconditional bail.

She is the former head of the National Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit, which supports some of the most sensitive police inquiries.

It is alleged that Casburn contacted the News of the World and offered the paper information about a Scotland Yard inquiry, Operation Varec, into whether the investigation into phone hacking should be reopened.

"The particulars are that on 11 September 2010, April Casburn, being a police constable, and acting as such, without reasonable excuse or justification, wilfully misconducted herself to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public's trust in that office. This charge relates to an allegation that DCI Casburn contacted the News of the World newspaper and offered to provide information," the court heard.

Casburn was charged after the Crown Prosecution Service examined a file sent to them by officers on Operation Elveden investigating alleged inappropriate payments by journalists to police and other public servants.

Andrew. · Post by **Andrew.** » Fri Nov 02, 2012 7:45 pm

Counter-terrorism officer denies charges of misconduct in public office over allegations that she offered information to a tabloid
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/0 ... ci-april-c asburn-court?

Is there a Jury with all the evidence allowed, or is it the crown vs crown.

Its as transparent as a crown vs crown (unpublic inquiry).

Post by **TonyGosling** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 11:43 am

Prosecutors said they would charge Andy Coulson, who was Cameron's communications chief from 2007 to 2011.

This is also the third set of charges faced by Coulson who was also a former editor of the News of the World.

In May he was taken to Glasgow and then charged with alleged perjury at the perjury trial of the former Scottish MP Tommy Sheridan in December 2010.

Through his lawyer he said he will “vigorously contest the perjury allegations”.

In July he was charged with conspiring to intercept communications without lawful authority between October 2000 and 2006. He faced four additional charges including one in relation to Milly Dowler.

At the time he vowed to “fight these allegations” saying that anyone who knew him knows that he wouldn’t and “more importantly” he didn’t “do anything to damage the Milly Dowler investigation”.
10.49am GMT Updated at 11.30am GMT
This is the third set of charges faced by Rebekah Brooks who has already appeared in court accused of conspiring to intercept communications without lawful authority of people including murdered teenager Milly Dowler. She has also been charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice by concealing evidence from police investigating phone hacking at the News of the World headquarters last summer.

She has publicly denied both sets of allegations saying she did not authorise, or was she aware of phone hacking during her editorship of the News of the World.
10.45am GMT The full charge in relation to Brooks, Kay and Jordan-BarberCharge 1

Bettina Jordan-Barber, John Kay and Rebekah Brooks, between 1 January 2004 and 31 January 2012, conspired together, and with others, to commit misconduct in public office.

Contrary to s.1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977
10.41am GMT The full charges in relation to Coulson and GoodmanCharge 1

Clive Goodman and Andrew Coulson, between 31 August 2002 and 31 January 2003, conspired together and with a person or persons unknown to commit misconduct in public office.

Contrary to s.1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977

Charge 2

Clive Goodman and Andrew Coulson, between 31 January 2005 and 3 June 2005, conspired together and with a person or persons unknown to commit misconduct in public office.

Contrary to s.1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977
10.40am GMT Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International and John Kay, the Sun’s chief reporter, are also to be charged with a conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office between 1 January 2004 and 31 January 2012.

A further individual, named as Bettina Jordan Barber, an employee of the ministry of defence, is also facing charges.

The CPS said:

This conspiracy relates to information allegedly provided by Bettina Jordan Barber for payment which formed the basis of a series of news stories published by the Sun. It is alleged that approximately £100,000 was paid to Bettina Jordan Barber between 2004 and 2011
10.39am GMT David Cameron’s former spin doctor Andy Coulson and Clive Goodman, the former News of the World royal correspondent, are to be charged with two conspiracies.

The CPS said in a statement:
The allegations relate to the request and authorisation of payments to public officials in exchange for information, including a Palace phone directory known as the 'Green Book' containing contact details for the royal family and members of the household.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2012/n ... ve-updates

Post by **TonyGosling** » Tue Mar 19, 2013 1:31 am

My piece tonight on press regulation and the royal charter - as not shown on the BBC - obviously !
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMefWN1iso8[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMefWN1iso8

Whitehall_Bin_Men · Post by **Whitehall_Bin_Men** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 2:44 pm

‘Too hot’ report on police leaks to media was buried as Leveson Inquiry ignored Met’s bombshell intelligence report
Bombshell file on Met links to News International was dismissed by Leveson Inquiry - classified 2006 document alleged senior officer passed secret information on Met chief’s decisions to the ‘News of the World’
‘Too hot’ report on police leaks to media was buried as Leveson Inquiry ignored Met’s bombshell intelligence report

Bombshell file on Met links to News International was dismissed by Leveson Inquiry - classified 2006 document alleged senior officer passed secret information on Met chief’s decisions to the ‘News of the World’
TOM HARPER Author Biography Sunday 19 January 2014

The Leveson Inquiry dismissed a police intelligence report that detailed an apparently corrupt relationship between a very senior former officer and the News of the World.

The classified document, dated April 2006, alleged that the officer was obtaining highly confidential information on decisions taken by Lord Blair when he was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and passing it on to the now defunct Sunday tabloid.

Robert Jay, the lead counsel to the Leveson Inquiry, who is now a judge, had stated that Scotland Yard did not provide him with a copy of the intelligence report until April 2012 – six weeks after it could have been raised publicly with Lord Blair in the hearings. Mr Jay did say, though, that he had been aware of the report’s existence earlier.

However, an investigation by The Independent on Sunday revealed that Mr Jay had been “informed of the existence of the document, its nature and the details of the intelligence” two months earlier, and weeks before Lord Blair, who is understood to have been keen to discuss the report’s implications with the then QC, took the stand.

A Yard source said: “We told them about the ... report and they said they didn’t want it. It was only when it was raised … that they then said we do want it and we gave it to them.”

On 16 April 2012, the existence of the suppressed report was first revealed by our stablemate The Independent, which reported on “a secret campaign from inside the highest ranks of the force to oust the former Commissioner Ian Blair”.

In a statement on the furore released last year, Mr Jay said: “The MPS first provided me with a copy of a police intelligence report on 23 April 2012, which was well after Lord Blair … had testified.”

Once the document was finally handed to the inquiry, Mr Jay said the Met claimed “public interest immunity” over it, which prevented Lord Justice Leveson from referring to it in public or considering it for the conclusions in his landmark report into inappropriate relationships between the press and the police.

However, the new disclosures have raised questions over whether the inquiry actually wanted to probe the most controversial areas of the relationship between senior Met echelons and the Murdoch media empire.

Ian Hurst, a high-profile victim of computer hacking by the News of the World – whose evidence on this subject was also rejected by Lord Justice Leveson – said: “Brian Leveson has been playing silly little games since the opening day of his inquiry. It is clear some areas were too hot for him to handle, the whole thing was stage-managed and the public are still no clearer about what really went on between the Met and News International. The public deserve better.”

Tom Watson, the campaigning Labour MP, said: “It appears that the murky relationships between senior police officers and News of the World (NoTW) executives have still not been properly investigated. This should be looked into by a parliamentary select committee.”

The 2006 intelligence report, created by Scotland Yard’s anti-corruption command, said a key NoTW hacking suspect, who shall be called Mr Root for legal reasons, was aware of unauthorised disclosures from Lord Blair’s “inner sanctum” to the former senior officer.

Hacking victim Ian Hurst Hacking victim Ian Hurst
However, the alleged breach in Lord Blair’s senior management team, which regularly discussed matters of national security, was never passed on to the Commissioner.

In an interview with The IoS, Det Ch Supt Alaric Bonthron, the current head of the Met’s anti-corruption command, was asked whether he thought his predecessors should have warned Lord Blair that the integrity of his top team was being pierced by a senior former police officer.

He replied: “I can’t account for what structures were in place at that time and who did what. The DPS [Directorate of Professional Standards] is a very different beast now. None of that command team are left at all in the organisation. I know now that we have systems in place and ... where corruption is in place we are held to account by the IPCC. ”

Lord Blair first learned of the report when a whistle-blower handed it to him in December 2011 at the height of the Leveson Inquiry.

When he discovered that Met anti- corruption officers had intelligence to suggest his senior team had been compromised six years earlier yet told him nothing about it, Lord Blair visited Scotland Yard’s HQ in Victoria. He passed the report to detectives working on criminal investigations into corrupt police officers leaking sensitive information to the Murdoch empire and other newspapers.

Detective Chief Superintendent Alaric Bonthron Detective Chief Superintendent Alaric Bonthron
Lord Blair, who led the Met between 2005 and 2008, asked his former colleagues to investigate the allegations, find out who knew about the breach and discover why he was not told.

It is understood that the Yard assured him the intelligence report, written by a named detective inside the Met’s powerful DPS, would be handed to Lord Justice Leveson to evaluate and consider for his report.

However, the former police chief was astonished when he was not questioned over the report’s implications during his time in the witness box in March 2012.

The senior former police officer, who shall be called “Zed” for legal reasons, has not been arrested by detectives investigating alleged leaks of information to journalists for payment. But other officers, including the assistant commissioner of City of London Police and a Met borough commander, have been seized by detectives investigating unauthorised disclosures to reporters – despite no money changing hands.

News that the Leveson Inquiry ignored key evidence raises serious questions over whether it delivered on the aims of David Cameron when he established the milestone judicial investigation in July 2011.

After setting up the inquiry in the wake of the Milly Dowler scandal, Mr Cameron told the Commons: “What this country has to confront is an episode that is frankly disgraceful, accusations of widespread law-breaking by parts of our press; alleged corruption by some police officers; a failure of our political system over many, many years to tackle a problem that’s been getting worse.”

Later, he added: “No one should be in any doubt of our intention to get to the bottom of the truth and learn the lessons for the future.”

A Met spokesman said: “Throughout the Leveson Inquiry the MPS were scrupulous in disclosing to the inquiry everything that could be relevant to [its] deliberations.

“In February 2012, we informed the inquiry of the existence of the document, its nature and the details of the intelligence.

“In April, we were asked to provide a copy of that document, which we did. The MPS is content with the way this information has been handled and handed to the inquiry.”

A spokesman for Zed said: “These claims are utter nonsense and the implications are possibly defamatory.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 69611.html

Whitehall_Bin_Men · Post by **Whitehall_Bin_Men** » Tue Jun 24, 2014 6:47 pm

Another victory for Britain's Masonic witchcraft cults perchance?
Rebekah Brooks: the wicked Witch... 'she's always been able to get what she wants' http://t.co/HEGby1pSCO

scienceplease 2 · Post by **scienceplease 2** » Wed Jun 25, 2014 4:01 pm

Brooks getting away scott free? How on earth could Coulson be in the conspiracy but not Brooks? It makes no sense. I guess the assistant destroying the evidence (also getting away scott free) did a really good job.

I did come across this gossip on social media:

We understand that the moment Rebakah Brooks entered the Murdoch sanctuary was when she found Rupert's effete son Lachlan in bed with her actor husband Ross Kemp.
You might remember she beat 'tough guy' Kemp up so badly he attended hospital and she was arrested for assault. Their marriage disintegrated and she began her mysterious stellar rise up the News Corp ladder (and Lachlan's career went quiet).
Murdoch stuck with Brooks like glue, dumped Cameron aide Coulson like a sack of hot sh*t.

Lachlan is certainly not the favored son. And his hiring of a gay assistant, massaging his shoulders... does look suspicious.
http://www.townandcountrymag.com/societ ... h-newscorp

While at New Statesman, it has this quote of the day by Ross Kemp to his wife at the time, Rebecca Brooks: "Shut up, you homophobic cow!"
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-s ... emp-bryant

Needless to say, I can find any corroboration of the Kemp-Lachlan Murdoch affair, but it would explain a lot!

scienceplease 2 · Post by **scienceplease 2** » Thu Jun 26, 2014 7:48 am

I dont know what to think about this... deleted story...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=uk

or this?

http://gawker.com/5856816/rupert-murdoc ... ack-editor

Post by **TonyGosling** » Sat Jun 28, 2014 2:39 pm

Something Is Rotten...

Robin Lustig
Journalist and broadcaster
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/robin-l ... 36021.html

Posted: 27/06/2014 15:50

What do you call an organisation, originally based in Sicily, that uses bribes and threats to buy influence and power?

Here's a clue: it begins with the letter M.

Here's another question: Whom did the Labour MP Tom Watson, at a parliamentary select committee hearing in November 2011, call "the first mafia boss in history who didn't know he was running a criminal enterprise"?

Again, the answer begins with the letter M. That's M for Murdoch. In this case, James Murdoch, the hapless son hung out to dry.

Forget Andy Coulson. If you can, forget phone-hacking. The real scandal is how senior politicians - and police officers - allowed themselves to be used by a ruthless media tycoon for his own commercial ends. And if you think it's all over, it's not.

Why is Michael Gove still palsy-walsy with Rupert Murdoch, who used to employ him in his days as a journalist on The Times? Why did Ed Miliband pose for that idiotic photo holding a copy of The Sun? The answer is simplicity itself: because they fear the power of Murdoch, and the damage he could do to their political careers.

I do not claim that either Gove or Miliband, or any of the other politicians who have snuggled up to Mr Murdoch, are doing, or have done, anything illegal. But it is frankly a disgrace that even after everything we've learned about the poisonous impact that the Murdoch empire has had on British public life, men such as these cannot resist the lure of the Murdoch imprimatur.

Two Labour prime ministers, Blair and Brown, a Conservative prime minister and a Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, Cameron and Osborne, have all succumbed. Two years ago, even Mr Cameron had to admit, in the House of Commons: "We all did too much cosying up to Rupert Murdoch." (He meant politicians on all sides, and he was right.)

So when you ask how the industrial-scale phone-hacking at the News of the World could go on for so long, undetected and unpunished, here's your answer. Murdoch and his minions had bought immunity. They paid police officers for information, they hired former police officers as highly-paid columnists, and they gathered dirt on senior politicians with which they threatened to ruin careers. With cover like that, who needs to bother about the niceties of the law?

The Labour MP Tom Watson, who appears not to know the meaning of the word fear, defined the mafia during his questioning of James Murdoch in 2011 as "a group of people who are bound together by secrecy, who together pursue their group's business objectives with no regard for the law, using intimidation, corruption and general criminality."

He asked Mr Murdoch to agree that it was also "an accurate description of News International in the UK." James Murdoch replied: "Absolutely not. Frankly, I think that that is offensive and it is not true."

The evidence, alas, is on Mr Watson's side, not Mr Murdoch's. What's more, even if Andy Coulson, former Murdoch editor and former Cameron media supremo, does end up in jail, the capo di tutti capi, the boss of bosses, is having the last laugh.

As the hacking scandal detonated beneath the Murdoch media empire, the boss was asked what his priority was. He turned to Rebekah Brooks and said: "This one." So when the jury acquitted her on all charges on Tuesday, he would have been entitled to gloat. Mission accomplished.

According to Nick Davies of The Guardian, the indefatigable reporter who did more than anyone to blow this sordid scandal wide open, the millions that the Murdoch empire spent on defending both Brooks and Coulson bought so much lawyer power into the courtroom that "lawyers and court reporters who spend their working lives at the Old Bailey agreed they had never seen anything like it, this multimillion-pound Rolls-Royce engine purring through the proceedings."

More than two-thirds of the estimated £100million-plus cost of the legal proceedings were paid by the Murdoch machine to defend his former executives. And yet - get this - in the words of a Financial Times headline on Wednesday: "Murdoch comes out on top despite lawyers' bills."

The FT reported that the share price of News Corp stock actually rose in New York after the Old Bailey verdicts were announced, and that, according to Forbes magazine, the Murdoch family's net wealth has risen from $7.5billion before the hacking crisis broke to $13.5billion this year. How depressing is that?

So where does this leave Sir Brian Leveson, his inquiry into press standards, and the regulation of the press? To me, the entire Leveson process was designed to provide the wrong answer to the wrong question. The hacking scandal wasn't primarily a failure of press regulation - it was, above all, a dismal failure of policing.

The police knew what the News of the World was doing, and turned a blind eye. It's hard not to conclude that the reason is that too many of them were far too close to the Murdoch papers. David Cameron himself was warned of the stench emanating from News International - and he ignored it. It cannot be said too often: it was journalists, specifically on The Guardian and the New York Times - who blew this thing wide open, not the police, not the judiciary, not our elected representatives at Westminster.

So if we want to ensure that future Murdochs have less power over future prime ministers and future police officers, we need to change the law on media ownership. Perhaps the dawning of the digital age will eventually destroy media moguls' power - yet for the time being, I fancy a headline in the Sun or the Daily Mail still has more potency than a 140-character tweet.

Yes, journalists on the News of the World (and almost certainly on other papers, too) behaved appallingly and unforgiveably in ripping open the private lives of people who had every right to expect their private lives to remain private.

So yes, by all means let us improve the way people who are badly treated by newspapers can obtain redress. But surely it can't be right, even at arm's length, to involve politicians, the very people who have again and again showed themselves so easily tempted by the goodies available in the press barons' troughs, anywhere near the process.

As Suzanne Moore put it in yesterday's Guardian: "In a healthy democracy, the relationship between journalists and politicians should be one of mutual inquiry verging on disdain. You cannot legislate for that any more than you can vet people for integrity. We can, though, tell it like it is."

Oh, and if you think Mr Murdoch and his papers have finally learned the error of their ways, just pause for one moment to consider the Sun's triumphant headline the day after the acquittal of its titian-haired former editor.

"Great day for red tops." No change there, then.

scienceplease 2 · Post by **scienceplease 2** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 10:24 am

Some analysis from the Guardian...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... kah-brooks

Please read whole thing... but I've cut out sections and highlighted stuff below...

Over the course of 138 working days in court number 12 of the Old Bailey, Mr Justice John Saunders proved himself a man of enormous patience, great stamina and not a little dry wit. The judge's epic five-day summing up of the hacking trial was a model of rigour and rectitude. [:roll:]
.....

Just occasionally, to keep spirits up, he ventured a lawyerly joke. When the end was in sight, for example, and he was addressing again News International's initial strategy to confine the hacking scandal to the "rogue royal reporter" Clive Goodman and his private investigator accomplice Glenn Mulcaire, Saunders noted that this had proved, perhaps, on reflection, and with the benefit of hindsight, "not the most successful damage limitation exercise ever undertaken".

....

News International's efforts to manage the scandal had, you imagined, back in 2006, seemed like a costly undertaking. One that involved, among other things, paying for the continued employment and legal fees of Mulcaire and Goodman after they were charged. Over the years since, however, as something like the whole truth has slowly emerged, that failed damage-limitation exercise has resulted in the conviction of six senior journalists – including one editor and three news editors – with trials of 12 more journalists scheduled. It has seen News International – now News UK – pay millions of pounds of compensation to more than 700 victims of hacking, with several thousand more potentially able to sue. It has shut down the most popular Sunday newspaper in the world and prevented Rupert Murdoch's companies taking a virtual monopoly of satellite broadcasting in Britain. And it has engendered one of the largest police investigations in Scotland Yard history at a cost of £32.7m so far, plus a trial that will cost £100m. As damage limitation goes it was about on a par with the burghers of Hamelin trying to short-change the pied piper.

....

In the pursuit of this goal [of destroying "other people's lives"] whole support networks of "dark arts" practitioners were available to reporters – not for just phone hacking and blagging, but also for around-the-clock surveillance and as specialist "followers".

....

This was a procedure, it emerged, that the News of the World applied pretty indiscriminately against everyone from the home secretary to bereaved families of soldiers, concocted celebrities and royal princes, rival journalists (including those in different departments on their own paper, and even Rebekah Brooks, who the jury exonerated of all knowledge of illegal practices). In one of the more telling pieces of evidence Mulcaire, on a salary, unbeknown to his editor, of nearly £92,500 to work day and night to get into other people's phones, complained by email to the news desk of the repetitive strain of their demands: "Overload! NO MORE PLEASE!"

In the context of such wall-to-wall compulsive behaviour – which included the unprecedented reporting mania of the "crowdfunded" hack Peter Jukes, who heroically tweeted to his followers every single exchange of the trial: that's 24,000 tweets, 450,000 words, 2.5m keystrokes, two knackered keyboards – it was impossible not to feel something of a hopeless journalistic lightweight in attending very far from all of the 138 days, in trying to pick my moments, in doing other stuff at the same time.

....

It was, at the outset, the prosecution's stated purpose to show that the principal defendants, Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and Stuart Kuttner, the veteran News of the World managing editor, "must have known" about the hacking and payments to public officials that happened in their newsroom. Andrew Edis QC, leading for the crown, then devoted eight months to the attempt to change that passive formulation to the active one that they "did know" in the minds of the jurors. In the case of Andy Coulson, there was something of a paper trail ("do his phone", he once memorably demanded of a reporter believed to be leaking information to a paid celebrity stooge, Calum Best). There was also Coulson's under-oath admission that he had heard the taped voicemail of David Blunkett, which made his guilty verdict all but inevitable. (No unanimity could be reached about his knowledge of payment to public officials, and a decision will be made about a retrial in the coming days). In the cases of Brooks and Kuttner, those two phrases – "must have known" and "did know" – were never conclusively elided for the jury, and both were found not guilty of all charges.

Brooks's legal team, led by Jonathan Laidlaw QC at an estimated cost of £30,000 a week, employed what Rupert Murdoch's authorised biographer Michael Wolff has called an "American-style defence". This Wolff defined in a blog contentiously titled "How Rupert Murdoch won the hacking trial", as the manner by which "captivating and theatrical lawyers overshadowed the crown's straightforward prosecution. They showed great flair and style, addressing the complicated charges with inundating detail and great confusion. It was certainly the most dizzying defence money could buy… "

I'm not sure "captivating and theatrical" are the words I'd always have used.

....

If you really wanted to find other beginnings though, you could keep going, back through another generation of royals, through the outlandish taboo-breaking phone-tapped revelations of "Squidgygate" and "Camillagate". Those extraordinary invasions of privacy had allowed certain journalists to believe that any intrusion at all might be possible and even legitimately in the public interest (a mindset that Paul McMullan, former features editor of the News of the World, has justified in these terms: "Privacy is the space bad people need to do bad things in. Privacy is for paedos. Privacy is evil, it brings out the worst qualities in people").

....
Tne result of this at Rupert Murdoch's red-tops was the sudden elevation of gossip columnists and showbiz editors to the top jobs. Piers Morgan became editor of the News of the World in 1994 at the age of 29 straight from editing the Sun's Bizarre column. At a stroke almost, in a culture already high on gossip, the traditional dividing lines between news and features, politics and entertainment were recast.

....

From the late 90s phone hacking promised to provide the access-all-areas pass to lives that were in every other respect gated. It allowed the hacker not only behind the roped-off cordon into the VIP area, but also into the most private details of the lives of politicians and anyone else briefly in the public gaze. The appetite for such access was a growth industry. The snatched phone message was often the nugget of fact around which a whole destructive fantasy world could be created. As the former News of the World showbiz reporter Dan Evans, another who has pleaded guilty to hacking charges, observed in court, once you had the killer detail – in this case Sienna Miller signing off a message to Daniel Craig with the words "I love you" – then you could fill the story out with "the kind of imaginative detail that tabloid reporters use on such occasions".

....

There were seven defendants in the dock but most of the time, in moments of drama, all eyes were on Brooks. Over the course of her 13 days in the witness box she barely deviated from her chosen narrative – that she trusted her journalists and never pressed them on where exactly their stories came from; that she was as shocked as anyone about the revelations of the hacking of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's phone (she was in the middle of an appointment at a fertility clinic, she said, when the Guardian broke the story); that she wasn't much use when it came to technology or finance; that her primary interest as an editor was in campaigning against paedophiles (Sarah's law was never far from her answers); and that it was all quite a long time ago.

In attempting to deflect her from these themes Brooks was asked many questions, but as the days wore on, and she hardly put a foot out of place, the question you really wanted the answer to was: how did she get here?

Which is to say, how exactly did Brooks transform herself from being the daughter of a tugboat worker who died of liver disease aged 50; from being the girl who was state-educated in Warrington, and who had no formal journalistic training, to becoming perhaps the most powerful woman in the country in the space of around 15 years?

One answer, in court, was provided by Brooks's mother, whose appearance in the witness box revealed the source of some of her daughter's ambitious charm, as well as a formidable steeliness under pressure. Another answer is provided by Piers Morgan, who in his memoir, The Insider, suggests himself, with typical humility, as the man who discovered and created her. The young features assistant first came to Morgan's attention when, cheque-book to hand, she broke the story of Paul Gascoigne's abusive relationship with his wife Cheryl, and not only made the story a focus for a campaign highlighting domestic violence, but also kept both parties onside (a trait that came to characterise her editorship). Subsequently she assisted Morgan in bugging the hotel room in which "royal love rat" James Hewitt was to be interviewed, and then proved to him she was up for anything by dressing as a cleaner and talking her way into the Wapping printing silo so that they could scoop the Sunday Times's lead story, excerpts from Jonathan Dimbleby's book about Prince Charles.

On this somewhat flimsy basis, Morgan made her his deputy. From there, as Murdoch explained to Michael Wolff, approvingly, she "social-climbed through his family", befriending first his daughter Elisabeth, then his son James, and along the way establishing a relationship with the old man in which, as Vanity Fair suggested, she became the daughter he'd always wanted: intensely loyal, obsessed with print journalism, ruthlessly ambitious. It is a loyalty he could hardly have valued more highly; not least in the reported £16m severance payments which have been used in part to fund her defence.

....

Brooks concentrated in court on doing what she was told, trying to find her way through the mass of evidence in front of her, mostly resisting any flicker of annoyance or frustration, just occasionally allowing herself the flirtatious half-smile by which, as one former colleague observed, she always "gives the impression of knowing more than she is letting on".

If she never betrayed it in person, the evidence itself was conclusive that she wielded her Murdoch-given power with all the hypocrisy and flexibility of conscience that her role demanded. The evidence dwelt in some detail on the exposure in Coulson's News of the World, and Brooks's Sun, of the affair between David Blunkett, then home secretary, and Kimberly Quinn. Blunkett was described by Brooks as a friend, someone "she had worked closely with on Sarah's law", but that did not stop her being the first to publish the name of Quinn, and assuming correctly that the home secretary, though "devastated", would remain an ally. Enemies were treated with far less kindness.

There was the sense by the end, despite the unanimous not guilty verdict, that the trial itself had been a form of rough justice for Brooks. It treated her own privacy with the same level of respect as she routinely treated the "targets" of the News of the World's journalism. Which is to say that, over the course of several months, everything she wanted hidden was dragged blinking out into the sun.

She got to know how it felt to be the subject of an adulterous "sex scandal", in the exposure of her on-off six-year affair with Coulson. She got to know what it was like to have her own phone hacked, her own movements tracked, her own home staked out. She understood only too well the importance of trying to evade the pack and the paparazzi as they sought to secure the one "killer photo" of the moment of her arrest, the photo as she said "from which you can't recover". And, courtesy of her husband, Charlie, whose defence in the botched plan to dispose of his laptop computer rested mainly on his insistence that he wanted to hide his "Lesbian Lovers" porn videos, she got her own "Jacqui Smith moment". (Charlie Brooks's barrister emphasised in summing up that his client was many things but "academically gifted" was not one of them; in this sense the Old Etonian horse trainer's defence essentially boiled down to the proposition that he was a stupid *. The jury clearly found that entirely plausible.)

...

The ultimate source of that power – Rupert Murdoch – was largely absent from proceedings, by name at least. You rarely felt sympathy for Andy Coulson, who hardly changed an expression of embattled seriousness from opening comment to verdict, but one occasion when it was hard to avoid a pang was when the former News of the World editor and Tory spin doctor was questioned about having to make a particular phone call. The phone call was to Murdoch, and was to relay the "tricky" news of the arrest in 2006 of Clive Goodman and a police raid, the first of many, at his newspaper's office.

....

Bollockings passed inexorably down that executive chain of command at the News of the World. Brooks rarely administered them herself, but she relied on men – her news editors, Miskiw and the rest – who did. Clive Goodman and Dan Evans, the only two journalists giving evidence, spoke wearily of the culture of constant harassment. Goodman, who in the heady days of Diana's indiscretions had broken five consecutive front-page splashes, a newspaper record, had turned in desperation to Mulcaire's little black book of hacking contacts as his own sources of stories dried up, as the demand for them only increased (he was known to the news desk as "the eternal flame" because despite their "encouragement" he never went out of the office). In his book about the ongoing nightmare of satisfying the News of the World's (and its readers') appetite for lurid exposure, Graham Johnson observed, "if you had a story to feed the bosses, they'd get off your back for a week. That's all that mattered."

It didn't, Johnson claimed, crucially, matter at all how those stories were obtained. "In truth, executives rarely challenged the integrity of reporters because it was a no-go area. Simply because many of us had no integrity at all. We lied for a living, cheated members of the public and broke the law routinely. Direct questions threatened to penetrate the Chinese walls that were supposed to protect executives from contamination…"

...

As well as effectively ending the particular dark arts in question, the trial has, you trust, altered for ever the instinctive fear and favour that our political leaders and the police have demonstrated towards News Group. Still, both David Cameron and Ed Miliband remained happy enough on this day of all days to do Murdoch's advertising for him, gurning with a front page. I don't know for sure of course, but despite everything, you imagine New York allowed itself a little smile at those images, before trying to get back to business as usual.

Trial timeline

November 2005 News of the World journalist Clive Goodman publishes information that could only have been found by intercepting the royal family's communications.

August 2006 Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire are arrested for accessing voicemails; both admit the charges. Andy Coulson states that as editor he takes ultimate responsibility, but that the incident was down to a "rogue reporter". He resigns a few months later.

July 2007 Coulson is appointed director of communications for the Conservative party.

July 2009 The Guardian's Nick Davies reveals that Murdoch's News Group Newspapers have paid over £1m to phone-hacking victims in legal settlements, in return for their silence. The News of the World protests its innocence; in November the Press Complaints Commission states there is "no evidence" of phone hacking beyond that by Goodman and Mulcaire.

September 2010 Former journalists at the News of the World tell the New York Times that hacking was "industry-wide"; reporter Sean Hoare says Coulson "actively encouraged" him to hack phones.

5 July 2011 The Guardian reports that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's voicemails were intercepted during her disappearance in 2002. It is later revealed that other targets of phone-hacking include relatives of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and relatives of 7/7 victims. Rebekah Brooks denies any involvement in the hacking.

7 July 2011 The 168-year-old News of the World announces that the issue of 10 July will be its last. On 8 July, Clive Goodman and Andy Coulson are arrested.

13 July 2011 David Cameron appoints Lord Justice Leveson to inquire into the culture, practice and ethics of the British press. NewsCorp withdraw their bid to take over British satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

15-19 July 2011 Brooks resigns as News International's chief executive; two days later she is arrested. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson resigns due to links to the News of the World. Sean Hoare is found dead at his home in Watford: police say his death is "unexplained but not suspicious".

14 November 2011 The Leveson inquiry opens in London.

May 2012 Brooks and her husband Charlie are charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

4 November 2012 Private text messages between Brooks and Cameron are made public. Brooks wrote of Cameron's address to the Tory conference: "Brilliant speech. I cried twice. Will love 'working together'."

5 June 2013 Brooks pleads not guilty to all charges.

28 October 2013 The trial "R v Brooks, Coulson and six others" opens at the Old Bailey.

31 October 2013 It is revealed that Brooks and Coulson had an affair from 1998 to 2004, when much of the phone hacking is alleged to have taken place.

11 June 2014 The jury deliver their one guilty verdict: Andy Coulson is guilty of phone hacking.

My summary: Murdoch promoted young, ambitious, morally-ambiguous, "morons" (with no memory or aptitude with technology and fiances, apparently) but had demonstrated use of the "dark arts" (bugging and blagging) and then applied extreme pressure on them to deliver dirt "to destroy people's lives". So who do you blame? The puppets or the puppeteers?

Whitehall_Bin_Men · Post by **Whitehall_Bin_Men** » Fri Sep 12, 2014 1:25 pm

Home | Media law
Hacking scoop reporter Nick Davies says journalists should find out from RIPA tribunal if police have spied on them
Dominic Ponsford
12 September 2014

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/hacking-s ... have-spied

The reporter who exposed the hacking scandal has said journalists should ask the Investigatory Powers Tribunal if police have spied on them.

Author of Hack Attack, Nick Davies, said he aimed to contact the Tribunal after being contacted by Press Gazette as part of the Save Our Sources campaign. Davies wrote a number of critical stories about the Met Police as part of his long investigation into hacking at the News of the World.

Press Gazette is urging journalists who may have been targeted by public authorities to make a complaint to the Tribunal to find out if they have been spied on.

The Tribunal is a court which decides whether public authorities use the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act in a way which is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

It was revealed earlier this month that the Met Police had used RIPA to secretly obtain details of phone calls made to Sun political editor Tom Newton Dunn and of calls made to The Sun newsdesk in order to find and then sack three police officers who lawfully leaked information about the Plebgate incident.

The Met has declined to reveal how often it has used RIPA against journalists in this way.

Last year public authorities made more more than 500,000 requests for telecoms records under RIPA.

Davies told Press Gazette: “It looks like Scotland Yard cheated to get hold of Tom Newton Dunn's phone records. They should have used the Police and Criminal Evidence Act which would have required them to go to court and to deal with the fact that they were trying to get hold of confidential journalistic material, so they would have had to justify their plan.

“Instead, they used RIPA, which allowed them to make the move without Tom or anybody even knowing, let alone having a chance to argue about it. It's like sneaking round the back of the house and climbing in through the window because you know you're not welcome at the front door.

“If they had genuinely thought that their request was justified, surely they would have gone the proper route and put their case.

“And, of course, it raises the equally worrying question of how many other times they have used this dodge to intrude on the communications of journalists.

“Certainly I've been warned in the past by a senior officer who told me that this kind of thing was going on. He had no detail. But the more we can find out, the better.

“So I agree with Press Gazette, that any of us who think we could possibly have been the victim of this kind of cheating by the police should try to persuade the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to tell us what has been happening.”

How to find out if public authorities have spied on your phone records:

It costs nothing to make a complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

It is not necessary for a journalist to have any evidence of covert activity against them (because by its nature such activity is secret) – they must only believe that such activity may have taken place.

Given the fact that Tom Newton Dunn was merely a journalist doing his job in a lawful way and investigating the police, any journalist who has written a story which is critical of the police may have had their phone records monitored. Both the Met Police and the Association of Chief Police Officers have said they do not believe such monitoring to be illegal. RIPA can also be used by a number of other public authorities and law enforcement agencies to secretly obtain telecoms records.

The Tribunal is not required to consider complaints which date back more than a year.

The Tribunal will not tell a journalist if they have been subject to surveillance unless their complaint is upheld.

Click here for more details about how to make a complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

Press Gazette has launched a petition orging the Interception of Communications Commissioner to take action to ensure public authorities stop using RIPA to spy on journalists' sources.

Whitehall_Bin_Men · Post by **Whitehall_Bin_Men** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 1:22 am

Andy Coulson perjury trial delayed until after general election
The case was due to start at the high court in Edinburgh on 21 April but will now begin on 11 May

Libby Brooks Scotland reporter
Monday 13 April 2015 17.41 BST Last modified on Tuesday 14 April 2015 00.04 BST

The trial of Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor who is facing a perjury charge, has been pushed back until after the general election.

The case was due to start at the high court in Edinburgh on 21 April, but on Monday the Judiciary of Scotland announced a new start date of 11 May.

The charge relates to the trial of the former Scottish Socialist MSP, Tommy Sheridan, and his wife, Gail, in December 2010, during which Coulson, a former director of communications for David Cameron, gave evidence.

The original date was set by Lord Burns in a hearing at the high court in Edinburgh in February, attended by Coulson and his wife, Eloise.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015 ... l-election

Post by **TonyGosling** » Wed Apr 13, 2016 2:10 pm

Culture Secretary John Whittingdale admits relationship with prostitute he met on online dating site – but insists he had no idea of her real job during their relationship and broke it off when he found out
Culture Secretary John Whittingdale admits to relationship with prostitute
He said in a statement that he was 'unaware' of the woman's occupation
Couple met through online dating website Match.com three years ago
Mr Whittingdale broke it off after he discovered someone tried to sell story
By KEILIGH BAKER FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 23:16, 12 April 2016 | UPDATED: 10:29, 13 April 2016
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... itute.html

Culture Secretary John Whittingdale has admitted he was in a relationship with a prostitute he met on an online dating website - but claims he was unaware she was a professional dominatrix.

The Tory MP for Maldon said he did not know the woman was a sex worker and he broke off the relationship when he discovered someone was trying to sell the story to the press.

The Culture Secretary said he went out with her for around six months in 2013 and 2014 – before he entered the Cabinet. They met through the Match.com site.

The 56-year-old minister, who is divorced with two children, said he brought the ‘embarrassing’ relationship to an end as soon as he discovered her occupation.

The relationship took place before the divorced father-of-two became a minister in May last year - although he was chairman of the influential Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee at the time.

He said: 'Between August 2013 and February 2014, I had a relationship with someone who I first met through Match.com. She was a similar age and lived close to me.

'At no time did she give me any indication of her real occupation and I only discovered this when I was made aware that someone was trying to sell a story about me to tabloid newspapers.

'As soon as I discovered [this], I ended the relationship. This is an old story which was a bit embarrassing at the time.

'The events occurred long before I took up my present position and it has never had any influence on the decisions I have made as Culture Secretary.'

But Mr Whittingdale is now facing calls to withdraw from the regulation of the press following the disclosure.

The relationship occurred before the divorced father-of-two became a minister in May last year
+2
The relationship occurred before the divorced father-of-two became a minister in May last year

Campaigners for tighter press regulation have warned his position was compromised after it was reported that a number of newspapers had investigated the claims but decided not to run the story.

Labour shadow cabinet minister Chris Bryant, who was previously shadow culture secretary, told the BBC: 'It seems the press were quite deliberately holding a sword of Damocles over John Whittingdale.

'He has a perfect right to a private life but as soon as he knew this he should have withdrawn from all regulation of the press.'

BBC2' s Newsnight reported that four newspapers - The People, The Mail on Sunday, The Sun and The Independent on Sunday - had investigated the claims but had concluded it was not a public interest story.

However campaigners for tighter press regulation accused the papers of hypocrisy - pointing out that as chairman of the Culture Committee, Mr Whittingdale had opposed statutory regulation.

Brian Cathcart of the Hacked Off campaign group said that since becoming Culture Secretary with responsibility for the media, Mr Whittingdale had taken a number of decisions which had been welcomed by the press.

'The public cannot have faith in his judgment, in his independence in making decisions about the media,' he told Newsnight.

'It is not a story about John Whittingdale's private life. It is a story about why the press didn't cover this.

'To suggest in the very week we have newspapers baying for the right to cover a story about a celebrity's private life which a judge has told them they have no right to cover, they would be too scrupulous, too high-minded to report a story about a Cabinet minister which any judge in the country would tell them they have a right to cover is just absurd.'

However, media commentator and former newspaper editor Roy Greenslade said that the papers would have been wary about covering such a story in the aftermath of the Leveson report on press standards.

'They would all be very careful about whether or not they had a public interest justification,' he told the programme.

'They would have all taken separate legal advice, they would have all looked at their code of practice. I think it is a bit much to castigate the newspapers for doing the right thing for once.'

The BBC reports Downing Street said Mr Whittingdale 'is a single man entitled to a private life' and added he had the full confidence of Prime Minister David Cameron.

In 2010, when he was chairman of the Commons culture committee, Mr Whittingdale questioned Max Mosley about his involvement in the S&M scene and said: 'You are a public figure and you know the British press.

'You know the appetite of the British press for stories of this kind. Had you not always felt this was a time bomb that sooner or later was going to go off?'

Mr Whittingdale is also a member of Cornerstone - whose tagline is 'Faith, Flag and Family' - a group of Conservative MP's 'dedicated to the traditional values'.

He has been Member of Parliament for Maldon since 1992 and has two children, Henry and Alice.

Post by **TonyGosling** » Wed Apr 13, 2016 2:20 pm

Newspapers accused of failure to run story of Whittingdale’s relationship with sex-worker
Mr Whittingdale said he ended the relationship when he discovered the woman was trying to sell the story to the press
Oliver Wright Political Editor @oliver_wright 3 hours ago85 comments
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peopl ... 81671.html

Newsnight reported four newspapers investigated the claims but concluded it was not a public interest story Reuters
Four newspaper groups, including The Independent, have been accused of failing to print a damaging story about the minister responsible for the regulation of the press.

The Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, yesterday confirmed that he had been in a six-month relationship with a sex worker that ended in 2013.

Mr Whittingdale, who is divorced, said he had been unaware of the woman's occupation and had broken off the relationship when he discovered the story was being offered to the newspapers.

However campaigners for tighter press regulation suggested the newspapers had investigated the claims, were aware that they were true but had held off publishing them for fear of alienating a powerful politician who was then chair of the House of Commons Media Select Committee.

Labour shadow cabinet minister Chris Bryant, who was previously shadow culture secretary, told the BBC: "It seems the press were quite deliberately holding a sword of Damocles over John Whittingdale.

"He has a perfect right to a private life but as soon as he knew this he should have withdrawn from all regulation of the press."

The relationship occurred before Mr Whittingdale became a Cabinet minister following the 2015 general election.

He said the relationship had not affected any of the decisions he had made in office.

"Between August 2013 and February 2014, I had a relationship with someone who I first met through Match.com. She was a similar age and lived close to me," he said.

"At no time did she give me any indication of her real occupation and I only discovered this when I was made aware that someone was trying to sell a story about me to tabloid newspapers. As soon as I discovered, I ended the relationship.

"This is an old story which was a bit embarrassing at the time. The events occurred long before I took up my present position and it has never had any influence on the decisions I have made as Culture Secretary."

It is understood that three newspapers – The People, The Mail on Sunday and The Sun – investigated the allegations against Mr Whittingdale but decided not to publish them. The Independent then investigated why those newspapers had failed to run the story but decided itself not to publish a story.

Amol Rajan, who was editor of the print edition of The Independent and is currently on paternity leave said:

"As I said in my email to one of the sources who was demanding we publish this tale - an email I was fully aware would later be made public - I rejected this story on editorial grounds."

Campaigners for tighter press regulation accused the papers of hypocrisy pointing out that as chairman of the Culture Committee, Mr Whittingdale had opposed statutory regulation.

Brian Cathcart of the Hacked Off campaign group said that since becoming Culture Secretary with responsibility for the media, he had taken a number of decisions which had been welcomed by the press.

"The public cannot have faith in his judgment, in his independence in making decisions about the media," he told Newsnight.

"It is not a story about John Whittingdale's private life. It is a story about why the press didn't cover this.

"To suggest in the very week we have newspapers baying for the right to cover a story about a celebrity's private life which a judge has told them they have no right to cover, they would be too scrupulous, too high-minded to report a story about a Cabinet minister which any judge in the country would tell them they have a right to cover is just absurd."

However the media commentator and former newspaper editor Roy Greenslade said that the papers would have been wary about covering such a story in the aftermath of the Leveson report on press standards.

"They would all be very careful about whether or not they had a public interest justification," he told the programme.

"They would have all taken separate legal advice, they would have all looked at their code of practice. I think it is a bit much to castigate the newspapers for doing the right thing for once."

Post by **TonyGosling** » Thu Aug 08, 2024 12:02 pm

The True Story Behind Charles and Camilla’s Phone Sex Leak on The Crown

https://time.com/6226657/crown-charles- ... ampongate/

November 9, 2022 9:50 AM EST

Royalists have expressed increasing anxiety and dismay about Netflix’s Windsor drama, The Crown, and perhaps rightly so. Season 5 is the show’s most scandalous entry to date. Not only does the series delve into the divorce between Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, but it also dredges up perhaps the most embarrassing moment of newly-named King Charles III‘s life: Tampongate.

In 1993, the British press published the full transcript of a private conversation between then-Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in which the two had an intimate and sexual exchange. The conversation was notable for a number of reasons, not least of which because it involved the heir to the throne saying that he would like to “live inside [her] trousers” and joking that he would be reincarnated as a tampon, hence the name of the scandal. (Some publications referred to the incident by the name “Camillagate,” which has a more sexist connotation because it places the blame on just the woman involved.) Charles and his now-wife and queen consort Camilla were both married to other people at the time. The transcript not only confirmed Princess Diana’s claims that Charles had been cheating on her but threw gasoline on Charles and Diana’s already contentious separation.

The Crown handles what could have been—and probably still is—a tawdry moment with humor and care. Dominic West, who took over the role of Charles this season, brings a light touch to the conversation. Camilla actor Olivia Williams imbues her character with empathy. It’s clear that the tampon joke is more a reference to his endless bad luck and a joke between intimate partners rather than some bizarre sexual fantasy. The scene portrays Charles and Camilla as tragic figures, star-crossed lovers who should have married each other in the first place, and who remained deeply devoted to one another ever after the royal family endeavored to keep them apart. The show handles Diana’s reaction, too, with sensitivity. The moment is obviously devastating for a woman whose marriage was doomed before she ever entered it.

The Crown helms closely to real-life events, though it does elide a few details, including another recorded phone call that had embroiled the royal family in scandal just a few months earlier. Here’s everything you need to know about Tampongate.

Did Charles and Camilla really have that phone sex conversation?

Yes, the conversation between Charles and Camilla that has been since immortalized as “Tampongate” actually took place on Dec. 17, 1989, when they were both still married to other people. (Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. Camilla and her ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles began living apart in 1993 before finalizing their divorce in 1995.) The press did not print the recorded call in full until 1993.

As depicted in The Crown, Charles and Camilla’s intimate chat ranged from the mundane to the sexual. At one point, Charles told Camilla that he would like to live in her trousers. When she asked if he was going to be reincarnated as a pair of knickers, he joked that it would be his luck to come back as a tampon. Unsurprisingly, this portion of the conversation is what dominated tabloid headlines.

Rumours has swirled for years that Charles and Camilla had had a long affair. And in 1992, the Andrew Morton biography Diana: In Her Own Words accused Charles of infidelity. Tampongate confirmed not only that the pair was having an affair but that they were also very much in love. Read past the sordid headlines, and it’s clear that these two had the sort of bond only achieved in long-term, committed partnerships.

The phone call also proved that all of Charles’ friends were not only aware of the affair but complicit in helping them conduct it. Camilla and Charles spend most of the conversation discussing the logistics of their illicit relationship. They debate which high-born friend’s house they will use for their next rendezvous, implicating several of their friends in hiding the not-so-secret relationship from Diana.

Charles later admitted in a 1994 documentary about his life that he had cheated on Diana. But he claimed he did so only after their relationship had “irretrievably broken down, us both having tried.”

What did Charles and Camilla say on the call?

The Crown remains faithful to the true text of the call, but here is the part that scandalized the nation:

Charles: Oh, God. I’ll just live inside your trousers or something. It would be much easier!

Camilla [laughing]: What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers? [Both laugh]. Oh, you’re going to come back as a pair of knickers.

Charles: Or, God forbid, a Tampax. Just my luck! (Laughs)

Camilla: You are a complete idiot! [Laughs] Oh, what a wonderful idea.

Charles: My luck to be chucked down a lavatory and go on and on forever swirling round on the top, never going down.

Camilla [laughing]: Oh darling!

Charles: Until the next one comes through.

Camilla: Oh, perhaps you could just come back as a box.

Charles: What sort of box?

Camilla: A box of Tampax, so you could just keep going.

Charles: That’s true.

Camilla: Repeating yourself … [laughing]. Oh, darling, oh I just want you now.
Was it really an amateur radio enthusiast who recorded the call?

Probably, though there are other theories. At the time, the press speculated that British secret services must be behind the recording of several royal calls, including ones between Diana and friends, and Prince Andrew and his then-wife Sarah Ferguson. Ex-spies interviewed by People magazine in the 1990s said the high quality of the recordings pointed to professionals as the leakers.

But in his memoir, Dogs and Lampposts, former Daily Mirror editor Richard Stott says that the tape was recorded and brought to the paper by a Merseyside resident “who had had a few pints of lager and a curry and decided he would test out his latest gadget, an electronic homing device that picks up Cellnet signals.” Charles was staying nearby, and apparently the amateur radio enthusiast stumbled on the call and immediately recognized the prince’s voice.

Tina Brown argues in her biography of Diana, The Diana Chronicles, that intercepting such calls in the 1980s wasn’t all that difficult, and Charles just suffered from bad luck. “From analysis of the radio signals embedded in the Charles-Camilla tape, there is little doubt that it was genuinely recorded off-air.”

Did the press bury the call?

According to The Diana Chronicles, the man who recorded the Tampongate call kept the tape to himself for several years. It was only after the press published a recorded phone call between Diana and an intimate friend that came to be known as Squidgygate (more on that call later) that the unnamed man realized he could sell his recording make a good deal of money from the tape. Brown writes that the man brought it to the Daily Mirror in 1992 and was paid £30,000 for his troubles.

The Mirror’s editor Richard Scott did not publish the Camilla-Charles conversation immediately for fear of undercutting the royal marriage. It was October of 1992, and Charles and Diana were on what the Palace told the press was a reconciliation trip to South Korea. But the tour was a disaster—the press noted that both prince and princess looked miserable. On Nov. 11, the Daily Mirror began teasing the pillow talk conversation with headlines like “Charles’s Secret Bedtime Phone Call,” though they did not publish the now-infamous tampon quote.

That winter, a fire at Windsor Castle burned down 100 rooms, devastating the Queen. The announcement of the split between Diana and Charles came soon after.

It was only after all this drama that, on Jan. 17, 1993, both the Sunday People and Sunday Mirror published Charles and Camilla’s full conversation—tampon reference and all. According to Sally Bedell Smith’s biography of Queen Elizabeth II, Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, a poll released shortly after the publication of the phone recording found that 68% of respondents said Charles had tarnished his reputation, and 42% thought 10-year-old Prince William should succeed Elizabeth as the next monarch.

What was the Squidgygate scandal?

The Crown skips over a second phone call scandal the plagued the royal family around the same time. In 1992, The Sun published a recorded phone call between Diana and her close friend, James Gilbey. Throughout the call, Gilbey calls her “darling,” and “Squidgy,” implying the two were having an intimate affair. Diana complains to Gilbey that Charles makes life “real, real torture.”

But the most tense part of the conversation came when Diana worried about getting pregnant, proof of her infidelity to Charles. Gilbey reassures her that it won’t happen.

The Squidgygate call took place just 14 days after the Tampongate phone call, likely on New Year’s Eve in 1989, given several context clues. Cyril Reenan, a retired 70-year old bank manager, made the recording of Diana’s call and sold it to The Sun. According to Brown, the paper held onto the tape for years because the editors decided it was “too hot even for them”

“Scurrilous rumors are one thing,” Brown writes, “but hard evidence that the sweetheart of the British public was not all she seemed in the virtue department was thought to be a commercially risky proposition, one that might also expose the paper to prosecution for unlawful interception.” It was the National Enquirer that finally received a copy of the tape and broke the story in August of 1992.

Puzzlingly, until his dying day Reenan claimed he made the recording on Jan. 4, 1990, four days after the conversation likely took place. And the company Cellnet has said that Reenan could not have made the recording on their airwaves in January since they had not yet built a base in the area. (Outside experts confirmed Cellnet’s claim.) Brown cites several experts who argue that Diana’s phone was bugged and speculates the recording must have been replayed over the air in hopes a civilian would pick it up.

Who exactly may have been behind the recording will likely remain a mystery. In The Crown, Diana becomes paranoid that British special intelligence is tapping her phone. Brown’s book suggests her concerns were not unfounded: She expresses skepticism at British officers’ denials that they recorded royal phone calls.

scienceplease 2 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 29, 2014 10:24 am Some analysis from the Guardian...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... kah-brooks

Please read whole thing... but I've cut out sections and highlighted stuff below...

Over the course of 138 working days in court number 12 of the Old Bailey, Mr Justice John Saunders proved himself a man of enormous patience, great stamina and not a little dry wit. The judge's epic five-day summing up of the hacking trial was a model of rigour and rectitude. [:roll:]
.....

Just occasionally, to keep spirits up, he ventured a lawyerly joke. When the end was in sight, for example, and he was addressing again News International's initial strategy to confine the hacking scandal to the "rogue royal reporter" Clive Goodman and his private investigator accomplice Glenn Mulcaire, Saunders noted that this had proved, perhaps, on reflection, and with the benefit of hindsight, "not the most successful damage limitation exercise ever undertaken".

....

News International's efforts to manage the scandal had, you imagined, back in 2006, seemed like a costly undertaking. One that involved, among other things, paying for the continued employment and legal fees of Mulcaire and Goodman after they were charged. Over the years since, however, as something like the whole truth has slowly emerged, that failed damage-limitation exercise has resulted in the conviction of six senior journalists – including one editor and three news editors – with trials of 12 more journalists scheduled. It has seen News International – now News UK – pay millions of pounds of compensation to more than 700 victims of hacking, with several thousand more potentially able to sue. It has shut down the most popular Sunday newspaper in the world and prevented Rupert Murdoch's companies taking a virtual monopoly of satellite broadcasting in Britain. And it has engendered one of the largest police investigations in Scotland Yard history at a cost of £32.7m so far, plus a trial that will cost £100m. As damage limitation goes it was about on a par with the burghers of Hamelin trying to short-change the pied piper.

....

In the pursuit of this goal [of destroying "other people's lives"] whole support networks of "dark arts" practitioners were available to reporters – not for just phone hacking and blagging, but also for around-the-clock surveillance and as specialist "followers".

....

This was a procedure, it emerged, that the News of the World applied pretty indiscriminately against everyone from the home secretary to bereaved families of soldiers, concocted celebrities and royal princes, rival journalists (including those in different departments on their own paper, and even Rebekah Brooks, who the jury exonerated of all knowledge of illegal practices). In one of the more telling pieces of evidence Mulcaire, on a salary, unbeknown to his editor, of nearly £92,500 to work day and night to get into other people's phones, complained by email to the news desk of the repetitive strain of their demands: "Overload! NO MORE PLEASE!"

In the context of such wall-to-wall compulsive behaviour – which included the unprecedented reporting mania of the "crowdfunded" hack Peter Jukes, who heroically tweeted to his followers every single exchange of the trial: that's 24,000 tweets, 450,000 words, 2.5m keystrokes, two knackered keyboards – it was impossible not to feel something of a hopeless journalistic lightweight in attending very far from all of the 138 days, in trying to pick my moments, in doing other stuff at the same time.

....

It was, at the outset, the prosecution's stated purpose to show that the principal defendants, Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and Stuart Kuttner, the veteran News of the World managing editor, "must have known" about the hacking and payments to public officials that happened in their newsroom. Andrew Edis QC, leading for the crown, then devoted eight months to the attempt to change that passive formulation to the active one that they "did know" in the minds of the jurors. In the case of Andy Coulson, there was something of a paper trail ("do his phone", he once memorably demanded of a reporter believed to be leaking information to a paid celebrity stooge, Calum Best). There was also Coulson's under-oath admission that he had heard the taped voicemail of David Blunkett, which made his guilty verdict all but inevitable. (No unanimity could be reached about his knowledge of payment to public officials, and a decision will be made about a retrial in the coming days). In the cases of Brooks and Kuttner, those two phrases – "must have known" and "did know" – were never conclusively elided for the jury, and both were found not guilty of all charges.

Brooks's legal team, led by Jonathan Laidlaw QC at an estimated cost of £30,000 a week, employed what Rupert Murdoch's authorised biographer Michael Wolff has called an "American-style defence". This Wolff defined in a blog contentiously titled "How Rupert Murdoch won the hacking trial", as the manner by which "captivating and theatrical lawyers overshadowed the crown's straightforward prosecution. They showed great flair and style, addressing the complicated charges with inundating detail and great confusion. It was certainly the most dizzying defence money could buy… "

I'm not sure "captivating and theatrical" are the words I'd always have used.

....

If you really wanted to find other beginnings though, you could keep going, back through another generation of royals, through the outlandish taboo-breaking phone-tapped revelations of "Squidgygate" and "Camillagate". Those extraordinary invasions of privacy had allowed certain journalists to believe that any intrusion at all might be possible and even legitimately in the public interest (a mindset that Paul McMullan, former features editor of the News of the World, has justified in these terms: "Privacy is the space bad people need to do bad things in. Privacy is for paedos. Privacy is evil, it brings out the worst qualities in people").

....
Tne result of this at Rupert Murdoch's red-tops was the sudden elevation of gossip columnists and showbiz editors to the top jobs. Piers Morgan became editor of the News of the World in 1994 at the age of 29 straight from editing the Sun's Bizarre column. At a stroke almost, in a culture already high on gossip, the traditional dividing lines between news and features, politics and entertainment were recast.

....

From the late 90s phone hacking promised to provide the access-all-areas pass to lives that were in every other respect gated. It allowed the hacker not only behind the roped-off cordon into the VIP area, but also into the most private details of the lives of politicians and anyone else briefly in the public gaze. The appetite for such access was a growth industry. The snatched phone message was often the nugget of fact around which a whole destructive fantasy world could be created. As the former News of the World showbiz reporter Dan Evans, another who has pleaded guilty to hacking charges, observed in court, once you had the killer detail – in this case Sienna Miller signing off a message to Daniel Craig with the words "I love you" – then you could fill the story out with "the kind of imaginative detail that tabloid reporters use on such occasions".

....

There were seven defendants in the dock but most of the time, in moments of drama, all eyes were on Brooks. Over the course of her 13 days in the witness box she barely deviated from her chosen narrative – that she trusted her journalists and never pressed them on where exactly their stories came from; that she was as shocked as anyone about the revelations of the hacking of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's phone (she was in the middle of an appointment at a fertility clinic, she said, when the Guardian broke the story); that she wasn't much use when it came to technology or finance; that her primary interest as an editor was in campaigning against paedophiles (Sarah's law was never far from her answers); and that it was all quite a long time ago.

In attempting to deflect her from these themes Brooks was asked many questions, but as the days wore on, and she hardly put a foot out of place, the question you really wanted the answer to was: how did she get here?

Which is to say, how exactly did Brooks transform herself from being the daughter of a tugboat worker who died of liver disease aged 50; from being the girl who was state-educated in Warrington, and who had no formal journalistic training, to becoming perhaps the most powerful woman in the country in the space of around 15 years?

One answer, in court, was provided by Brooks's mother, whose appearance in the witness box revealed the source of some of her daughter's ambitious charm, as well as a formidable steeliness under pressure. Another answer is provided by Piers Morgan, who in his memoir, The Insider, suggests himself, with typical humility, as the man who discovered and created her. The young features assistant first came to Morgan's attention when, cheque-book to hand, she broke the story of Paul Gascoigne's abusive relationship with his wife Cheryl, and not only made the story a focus for a campaign highlighting domestic violence, but also kept both parties onside (a trait that came to characterise her editorship). Subsequently she assisted Morgan in bugging the hotel room in which "royal love rat" James Hewitt was to be interviewed, and then proved to him she was up for anything by dressing as a cleaner and talking her way into the Wapping printing silo so that they could scoop the Sunday Times's lead story, excerpts from Jonathan Dimbleby's book about Prince Charles.

On this somewhat flimsy basis, Morgan made her his deputy. From there, as Murdoch explained to Michael Wolff, approvingly, she "social-climbed through his family", befriending first his daughter Elisabeth, then his son James, and along the way establishing a relationship with the old man in which, as Vanity Fair suggested, she became the daughter he'd always wanted: intensely loyal, obsessed with print journalism, ruthlessly ambitious. It is a loyalty he could hardly have valued more highly; not least in the reported £16m severance payments which have been used in part to fund her defence.

....

Brooks concentrated in court on doing what she was told, trying to find her way through the mass of evidence in front of her, mostly resisting any flicker of annoyance or frustration, just occasionally allowing herself the flirtatious half-smile by which, as one former colleague observed, she always "gives the impression of knowing more than she is letting on".

If she never betrayed it in person, the evidence itself was conclusive that she wielded her Murdoch-given power with all the hypocrisy and flexibility of conscience that her role demanded. The evidence dwelt in some detail on the exposure in Coulson's News of the World, and Brooks's Sun, of the affair between David Blunkett, then home secretary, and Kimberly Quinn. Blunkett was described by Brooks as a friend, someone "she had worked closely with on Sarah's law", but that did not stop her being the first to publish the name of Quinn, and assuming correctly that the home secretary, though "devastated", would remain an ally. Enemies were treated with far less kindness.

There was the sense by the end, despite the unanimous not guilty verdict, that the trial itself had been a form of rough justice for Brooks. It treated her own privacy with the same level of respect as she routinely treated the "targets" of the News of the World's journalism. Which is to say that, over the course of several months, everything she wanted hidden was dragged blinking out into the sun.

She got to know how it felt to be the subject of an adulterous "sex scandal", in the exposure of her on-off six-year affair with Coulson. She got to know what it was like to have her own phone hacked, her own movements tracked, her own home staked out. She understood only too well the importance of trying to evade the pack and the paparazzi as they sought to secure the one "killer photo" of the moment of her arrest, the photo as she said "from which you can't recover". And, courtesy of her husband, Charlie, whose defence in the botched plan to dispose of his laptop computer rested mainly on his insistence that he wanted to hide his "Lesbian Lovers" porn videos, she got her own "Jacqui Smith moment". (Charlie Brooks's barrister emphasised in summing up that his client was many things but "academically gifted" was not one of them; in this sense the Old Etonian horse trainer's defence essentially boiled down to the proposition that he was a stupid *. The jury clearly found that entirely plausible.)

...

The ultimate source of that power – Rupert Murdoch – was largely absent from proceedings, by name at least. You rarely felt sympathy for Andy Coulson, who hardly changed an expression of embattled seriousness from opening comment to verdict, but one occasion when it was hard to avoid a pang was when the former News of the World editor and Tory spin doctor was questioned about having to make a particular phone call. The phone call was to Murdoch, and was to relay the "tricky" news of the arrest in 2006 of Clive Goodman and a police raid, the first of many, at his newspaper's office.

....

Bollockings passed inexorably down that executive chain of command at the News of the World. Brooks rarely administered them herself, but she relied on men – her news editors, Miskiw and the rest – who did. Clive Goodman and Dan Evans, the only two journalists giving evidence, spoke wearily of the culture of constant harassment. Goodman, who in the heady days of Diana's indiscretions had broken five consecutive front-page splashes, a newspaper record, had turned in desperation to Mulcaire's little black book of hacking contacts as his own sources of stories dried up, as the demand for them only increased (he was known to the news desk as "the eternal flame" because despite their "encouragement" he never went out of the office). In his book about the ongoing nightmare of satisfying the News of the World's (and its readers') appetite for lurid exposure, Graham Johnson observed, "if you had a story to feed the bosses, they'd get off your back for a week. That's all that mattered."

It didn't, Johnson claimed, crucially, matter at all how those stories were obtained. "In truth, executives rarely challenged the integrity of reporters because it was a no-go area. Simply because many of us had no integrity at all. We lied for a living, cheated members of the public and broke the law routinely. Direct questions threatened to penetrate the Chinese walls that were supposed to protect executives from contamination…"

...

As well as effectively ending the particular dark arts in question, the trial has, you trust, altered for ever the instinctive fear and favour that our political leaders and the police have demonstrated towards News Group. Still, both David Cameron and Ed Miliband remained happy enough on this day of all days to do Murdoch's advertising for him, gurning with a front page. I don't know for sure of course, but despite everything, you imagine New York allowed itself a little smile at those images, before trying to get back to business as usual.

Trial timeline

November 2005 News of the World journalist Clive Goodman publishes information that could only have been found by intercepting the royal family's communications.

August 2006 Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire are arrested for accessing voicemails; both admit the charges. Andy Coulson states that as editor he takes ultimate responsibility, but that the incident was down to a "rogue reporter". He resigns a few months later.

July 2007 Coulson is appointed director of communications for the Conservative party.

July 2009 The Guardian's Nick Davies reveals that Murdoch's News Group Newspapers have paid over £1m to phone-hacking victims in legal settlements, in return for their silence. The News of the World protests its innocence; in November the Press Complaints Commission states there is "no evidence" of phone hacking beyond that by Goodman and Mulcaire.

September 2010 Former journalists at the News of the World tell the New York Times that hacking was "industry-wide"; reporter Sean Hoare says Coulson "actively encouraged" him to hack phones.

5 July 2011 The Guardian reports that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's voicemails were intercepted during her disappearance in 2002. It is later revealed that other targets of phone-hacking include relatives of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and relatives of 7/7 victims. Rebekah Brooks denies any involvement in the hacking.

7 July 2011 The 168-year-old News of the World announces that the issue of 10 July will be its last. On 8 July, Clive Goodman and Andy Coulson are arrested.

13 July 2011 David Cameron appoints Lord Justice Leveson to inquire into the culture, practice and ethics of the British press. NewsCorp withdraw their bid to take over British satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

15-19 July 2011 Brooks resigns as News International's chief executive; two days later she is arrested. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson resigns due to links to the News of the World. Sean Hoare is found dead at his home in Watford: police say his death is "unexplained but not suspicious".

14 November 2011 The Leveson inquiry opens in London.

May 2012 Brooks and her husband Charlie are charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

4 November 2012 Private text messages between Brooks and Cameron are made public. Brooks wrote of Cameron's address to the Tory conference: "Brilliant speech. I cried twice. Will love 'working together'."

5 June 2013 Brooks pleads not guilty to all charges.

28 October 2013 The trial "R v Brooks, Coulson and six others" opens at the Old Bailey.

31 October 2013 It is revealed that Brooks and Coulson had an affair from 1998 to 2004, when much of the phone hacking is alleged to have taken place.

11 June 2014 The jury deliver their one guilty verdict: Andy Coulson is guilty of phone hacking.
My summary: Murdoch promoted young, ambitious, morally-ambiguous, "morons" (with no memory or aptitude with technology and fiances, apparently) but had demonstrated use of the "dark arts" (bugging and blagging) and then applied extreme pressure on them to deliver dirt "to destroy people's lives". So who do you blame? The puppets or the puppeteers?

9/11, 7/7, Covid-1984 & the War on Freedom

Phone hacking - Leveson enquiry via Andy Coulson and Cameron

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