12 Sep 2010 | Uncategorized
When Paul McMullan, the former News of the World journalist, spoke to the Guardian the other day he did something slightly odd. He was describing how routine it was for staff at the paper to use dubious methods — and he mentioned David Beckham, twice.
First he was explaining that Andy Coulson, the former editor now working in Downing Street, must have been aware of these methods, but would not have been told about every single instance. By way of example, McMullan said: “It wasn’t of significance for me to say I just rang up David Beckham and listened to his messages.”
And a little later, illustrating the activities of the paper’s specialist phone-hacker, Glenn Mulcaire, he said: “He was hacking masses of phones. We reckoned David Beckham had 13 different SIM cards, and Glenn could hack every one of them.”
In a way it is hardly surprising that Beckham’s name should come up in this affair, given how much he was and is in the news. But then again it hasn’t come up in this context before, at least not prominently. Why would McMullan pluck his name out of the air like that? Could he be telling us something?
Along with Elle Macpherson, Prince William and Gordon Taylor (definite), and John Prescott, Vanessa Feltz and Jemima Khan (possibles), not to mention at least 85 others, could the golden boy of football, one of the most famous people on the globe, have been among the hackers’ many victims?
It’s surely enough to prompt another look at the sensational scandal of summer 2004, when the Rebecca Loos revelations scraped the gloss off the Beckhams’ marriage. Now, which paper was it that broke that story? Why, the News of the World.
And who was the reporter? None other than Neville Thurlbeck, who shared so many bylines with royal editor and convicted hacker Clive Goodman, and who seems likely to have been the intended recipient of the famous “for Neville” email full of hacked messages (though he says he never saw it).
Thurlbeck’s Rebecca Loos expose did not, on the face of it, involve voicemail messages in the style of Mulcaire and Goodman’s stream of illegal stories in 2005-6. Indeed it happened before Mulcaire had even developed his technique of accessing voicemails, if the evidence given in court in 2007 is correct.
But it did involve mobile telephones.
A Sunday Times narrative of the case, written in July 2004, runs like this:
“…all this while Neville Thurlbeck had been beavering away at the News of the World, gathering details of the affair, doing ‘bog-standard, old-fashioned hack work’ — knocking on doors, nurturing contacts.
“At the end of March, Thurlbeck made a breakthrough, obtaining solid proof that Loos and Beckham had been in a sexual relationship: a SIM card containing salacious text messages that Beckham had been continuing to send Rebecca.
“He also established, significantly, that the mobile phone being used to transmit these messages was, without doubt, Beckham’s…
“Thurlbeck says he cannot identify his sources, only that they were either extremely close to Rebecca, or extremely close to Beckham, or both.
“On Friday, April 2, Thurlbeck called on Rebecca at her parents’ home to tell her the News of the World would be running a story on Sunday about her affair with Beckham and that it would include intimate details of their ‘text sex’.”
So, was Thurlbeck merely engaged, as he recalled for the Sunday Times, in “bog-standard, old-fashioned hack work”?
Well that is what he said, but bear this in mind. The judge in the Mosley privacy trial remarked of Thurlbeck that “his ‘best recollection’ is so erratic and changeable that it would not be safe to place unqualified reliance on his evidence…”
Now look again at at Paul McMullan’s words about Mulcaire: “This was just commonplace. He was hacking masses of phones. We reckoned David Beckham had 13 different SIM cards, and Glenn could hack every one of them.”
McMullan was talking about an even earlier time, in 2001 or before. What he implies, though, is that even back then Beckham was a priority target for dubious methods. That certainly won’t have changed after McMullan left the paper.
If somebody ever gets around to investigating this affair properly, they should ask a question or two about David Beckham. And in the meantime, Beckham himself might consult his lawyers, on the basis that Murdoch is giving away cash in these cases.
Oh, and in case you are wondering, when the News of the World broke Loos/Beckham story, its editor was Andy Coulson.
5 Sep 2010 | Uncategorized
Why are people queueing up to sue News International in the phone hacking scandal? Because, so far, the company has always paid such people large sums of money to shut up and go away. Why is the company doing that? I think you can work that out for yourself.
A much more testing question is, why did Scotland Yard, with the blessing of the Director of Public Prosecutions, fail to investigate the phone hacking matter properly? And why were police so reluctant to tell those people who might have a case against the company that they were probably the victims of hacking?
As the New York Times reminds us today, and as the Commons media select committee set out very clearly last February, detectives had leads that even Clouseau could not have missed.
There was the contract phone-hacker Glenn Mulcaire signed with the News of the World, undertaking to investigate a senior figure in the football world. Then there was the News of the World email containing transcripts of dozens of voicemail intercepts involving that same figure. That’s quite a start, but there was more.
Police had the name of the person who wrote the email: News of the World journalist Ross Hindley. And the first name of the person for whom the transcripts were made: Neville. The paper employed only one person called Neville: its chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck.
You are a detective, charged with investigating crime. What do you do with this information, bearing in mind that you know the hacking in question is very likely to be illegal?
If you are Assistant Commissioner John Yates of the Metropolitan Police, apparently, you file it under “Too much bother.” Neither Thurlbeck nor Hindley nor the victim nor Mulcaire nor anyone else, so far as we know, was ever asked a single question by police about these matters. Their phone records, computers and document files were never examined. Nothing.
When Yates appeared before the Commons select committee (to which I was an adviser), he offered the following excuses: the law on hacking is complicated and was almost untested in court; the police have limited resources and have to go for the easiest convictions; the evidence was old; there was no way of showing that the Neville in question was Thurlbeck; if approached, Thurlbeck was “99.9 per cent certain” to say “no comment”.
Ask yourself: do you recognise this kind of policing in modern Britain? Is this timidity and caution characteristic of the Met in the 21st century?
Yates himself is famous for the unrelenting exhaustiveness of his inquiry into cash for peerages. Thousands of documents sequestered, key figures (including Tony Blair) interviewed to within an inch of their lives, months of press frenzy and… no charges.
Here is something else to consider. As the New York Times rightly points out, the most sensational news angle in this whole affair is that the voicemails of Princes William and Harry were accessed by the News of the World. Had that been known at the time that the scandal broke in 2006, it is fair to assume that the public would have been far more outraged by the offences than they were.
This was a national newspaper systematically and illegally eavesdropping on the Queen’s grandsons. These were the sons of Princess Diana, whom the press are supposed to treat with a measure of respect and restraint as atonement for the harassment of their mother.
And the security implications are quite something: a terrorist tapping those phones might learn information about the princes’ movements which could be useful in preparing an assassination attempt.
All the ingredients are there for a class-A public furore. If, at the time the scandal first broke, the targeting of the princes had been made public, the public would have demanded the most thorough investigation possible, with the entire News International organisation up to Rupert Murdoch placed under the microscope. The News of the World itself would have been shamed as never before.
But somehow that did not happen. This most damaging information about the News of the World did not come out. Prosecutors chose not to name the princes among the five hacking victims listed in the charges against Mulcaire and NotW royal editor Clive Goodman. The court and the public did not hear that William and Harry had been bugged.
In fact the Metropolitan Police did not reveal that the princes’ phones had been tapped until they were forced to by the Commons committee last year. Why not?
As the New York Times points out, the relationship between the Metropolitan Police and News International is now a matter of public concern. Would any other organisation or corporation whose staff were under suspicion have received such gentle treatment at the hands of detectives and prosecutors?
Yates questioned the prime minister himself over cash for peerages, causing fury in Downing Street, but when it came to the News of the World his officers tiptoed around as if in the presence of a sleeping baby.
There are calls for the Met to reopen the investigation, but that will not be enough. The last time they were asked to do that they completed their reinvestigation in a matter of hours and announced that everything was just fine. No, if we want to know what happened the case must be reviewed and re-investigated by another force, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission should start organising that now.
Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University.
http://twitter.com/BrianCathcart
21 Jul 2009 | Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Lily Ash Sakula
News of the World editors past and present were called before the parliamentary Culture Media and Sport Committee to defend themselves against allegations of widespread illegal practices today [Tuesday 21 July].
Current NotW editor Colin Myler and former editor Andy Coulson insisted jailed reporter Clive Goodman was a rogue operator and had acted alone in hacking the phones of celebrities and royals. Myler also insisted that senior NotW reporter Neville Thurlbeck had “no recollection” of receiving an email of the a transcript of Professional Footballer’s Association chief Gordon Taylor’s voicemail messages (revealed to the committee by Guardian journalist Nick Davies last week) despite the fact the email stated that it was “for Neville”.
Pressed on whether he had ever thought stories at News of the World had been obtained illegally, Myler answered “not really”.
Adam Price MP highlighted the fact that in a story from News of the World “Chelsy tears strip off Harry” a voicemail message between the Princes William and Harry had been quoted verbatim, and asked how the editors could not have been aware of phone hacking when reviewing it. Coulson said he had ‘no recollection’ of this particular story.
Andy Coulson made a short opening statement to the effect that he had “no recollection” of phone tapping occurring while he was editor, that the PCC code was rigorously upheld during his time, and that “he made no apology” for the fact that the News of the World sometimes did pay out large sums of money to get a story. He said he took responsibility for what had gone on under his leadership “without my knowledge” and this had caused his resignation. He also admitted that “mistakes were made” and that “the system could have been better”. At the end of the session Coulson revealed that he had recently been approached by Scotland Yard because there was evidence his own phone was being tapped.
