09 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Full details of the phone hacking of murdered school-girl Milly Dowler may never be discovered, the Metropolitan Police Service revealed today.
A witness statement from detective chief inspector John MacDonald, which was read to the Leveson Inquiry today, explained to the court that though there is evidence that the voicemails were hacked, it is unlikely there will be “any further clarity” on the issues.
As a result of incomplete call data provided by the mobile phone company, the Met explained that “a definitive conclusion is not and may never be possible.”
The court heard that Sally Dowler was given a moment of “false hope” on 24 March 2002 when space was freed on her daughter’s mobile phone answering service — the family hoped that Milly was listening to and deleting her messages. MacDonald’s statement explained that Mrs Dowler may have been able access her daughter’s voicemail message box on that day after the mobile phone company automatically deleted voicemails 72 hours after they had been listened to.
MacDonald’s statement added that Mrs Dowler and the Metropolitan Police discussed suspicions that her daughter’s voicemail was being accessed by someone else. The statement explained that Mrs Dowler was reassured that her thoughts were reasonable and possible, given that she was able to leave messages one day, but not the previous day.
The schoolgirl’s voicemail was put into a “preserved state” on 25 March, to prevent any further voicemails being automatically purged. On 26 March, Surrey Police unsuccessfully attempted to record the teenager’s voicemail messages. A message left after this attempt was later “saved”, supporting the theory that someone had accessed Milly’s voicemail and listened to the message.
The statement added: “MPS cannot rule out that someone illegally accessed Milly’s phone on 26 March 2002, however, call data is incomplete,” but the incomplete information meant MPS were “unable to conclusively establish the accuracy of this theory.”
David Sherborne, counsel for the victims, condemned the failure of Surrey Police to investigate phone hacking in 2002, and criticised the MPS’ decision to close hacking investigation and concealment of News of the World, despite uncovering “Aladdin’s cave” of evidence. Sherborne added: “If only Rupert Murdoch had “ripped the place apart” in 2006. But he didn’t.”
Sherborne also read a statement from the Dowler family, in which they thanked DCI John MacDonald and his team for their efforts to get to the bottom of this issue.
The statement added: “If Surrey Police had prosecuted this activity in 2002 then perhaps countless others would have avoided having their messages hacked by News of the World. Police neglect and deference meant it took the relentless efforts of one journalist [Nick Davies – Guardian] to uncover what the police already knew. We continue to have faith that his efforts and the efforts of the inquiry and Operation Weeting will have a lasting positive impact.
Also appearing before the court this morning, DCI Brendan Gilmour from MPS and Operation Glade, described the sensitivities of investigating journalists in the wake of Operation Motorman in 2003 to the court.
Gilmour explained that the MPS discovered that Paul Marshall, a civilian employee, was providing private detectives with information, which eventually ended up in newspapers, from the police national computer.
Gilmour stressed that whilst they were “alive to the sensitivities of investigating journalists” there “wasn’t any fear involved at all” from the MPS.
Seven journalists, identified from the ledgers of private investigator Steve Whittamore, were questioned under caution about how they obtained certain information. Gilmour explained that “quite a few of them said the info was coming from the courts”, and added that all of the journalists said they would not have used Whitammore if they had known the information was being accessed illegally.
In March 2004, the CPS advised that there was insufficient evidence to charge any of the journalists. Gilmour said “I accepted the decisions on the basis that we couldn’t prove guilty knowledge.”
In a relatively short evidence session Russell Middleton, temporary assistant Chief Constable of Devon & Cornwall Police and deputy senior investigating officer on Operation Reproof also appeared at the Inquiry.
Middleton explained to the court that Operation Reproof began as an investigation into blackmail.
He said: “We were open minded as to what we would find”, and added that no evidence suggesting the involvement of a media organisation was found, but journalists were not “out of scope” in this police investigation.
At the start of the day’s hearing, Leveson addressed issues raised by Index on Censorship and other organisations, regarding transparency of the governments status as core participants. He said, that though he respects the organisations, he believed they misunderstood the purposes of redaction.
He added: “Redactions of any sort by the government will be approached in the same way as redactions sought by other core participants.”
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02 Apr 12 | Leveson Inquiry
A former senior executive of the News of the World who was contracted to provide PR advice to the Scotland Yard has defended his police contacts.
Recalled to the Leveson Inquiry today, Neil Wallis brushed off the suggestion by Robert Jay QC that dining with officers might lead to a perception of “over-cosiness”, rejecting the notion that experienced officers such as Lord Stevens were “going to be seduced by me taking him out for steak & chips”.
He said his going out for dinner with a police officer was no different from a civil servant doing so with a businessman. “Have you ever had a working lunch with somebody more than once?” he asked the Inquiry. “It is the way of the world.”
Defending his trade, Wallis said: “Journalists live and die by their contacts. I nurtured these contacts because that’s what journalists do. ”
“I’ve built relationships with the police, politicians,” he said, “I haven’t put an arm lock on these people.”
He emphasised what he saw as a greater need for public officials to talk to journalists. “We need more talking, rather than less,” Wallis said, arguing it was healthier for democracy and a free press.
The Metropolitan police has faced criticism for awarding Wallis’s company, Chamy Media, a £24,000-a year contract to provide communications advice to the Met on a part-time basis from October 2009 to September 2010. Giving evidence at the Inquiry last month, former commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said that it was with hindsight that he regretted the force entering into a contract with Wallis. Last week, the Met’s communications chief, Dick Fedorcio, resigned after disciplinary proceedings were launched against him, with an inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) into Wallis’ contract finding that Fedorcio had a case to answer for gross misconduct.
Discussing the arrangement, Wallis said his value was providing “crisis management” to the force.
He also described his working relationship with senior officers at the Met prior to his departure from journalism in 2009. Wallis dated this back to the the tenure of Lord Condon (1993-2000) and stressed the setup was “corporate, strategic” and not about “a quick hit for a story”.
“One benefit of my relationship with senior offices was, if I rang and said ‘we have situation Met needs to get involved with’, they’d take it seriously because they’d know I’m a guy who wouldn’t mess them about,” Wallis told the Inquiry.
He added that he advised Lord Stevens on his application as Met commissioner, advising him to emphasise he was a “coppers copper”. Wallis stressed he himself had “strong views” on what was happening at the Met at the time in light of the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and that whoever succeeded Lord Condon was an “important appointment” for the force.
In his witness statement Wallis wrote: “It should not come across that my involvement in advising the senior police officers from Scotland Yard was entirely altruistic. There was something in it for me and my newspaper.”
He added that when the paper was running a highly public campaign, senior officers would write exclusive articles of give quotes in support which would go into the tabloid.
Wallis was arrested in July 2011 as part of Operation Weeting, the Met’s investigation into phone hacking. He was bailed and has not been charged.
Also giving evidence this morning were Stewart Gull of Jersey States Police, Paul McKeever of the Police Federation, and Mark Burns-Williamson and Nathan Oley, both of the Association of Police Authorities. Oley, the APA’s head of press and public affairs, said guidelines for press-police contact as suggested in the Filkin report would be “helpful” for the future.
“We’re entering unchartered territory,” Oley said, citing greater media interest in policing. He said the Inquiry’s outcomes were crucial to ensure a “free flow of information” by both parties.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow.
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21 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The crime editor of the Times has said the “chilling effect” of the Leveson Inquiry and the Metropolitan police’s “internal clampdown” has led to there being “virtually no social contact with officers”.
“In the current climate, if you arranged to meet an officer you’d be looking over your shoulder the whole time,” Sean O’Neill told the Inquiry this morning.
He expressed his fear that building up a relationship of trust with contacts would be “seriously inhibited” if it were impossible to meet them for coffee, noting that he had “bought officers and staff cups of coffee, pints of beer, lunches and evening meals”.
He emphasised the need for crime correspondents to be able to talk freely and openly with officers. “You’re in this game not just for five minutes; you need to talk to people for years and years and years,” he said.
In his written evidence, O’Neill added that the Met’s institutional instinct was to be “closed, defensive and secretive”, adding that such an attitude “is reflected in a tense relationship with the media.”
He told the Inquiry: “the last time I met an officer we met a very, very long way from Scotland Yard because he was so nervous abut meeting me and that anyone would see him,” adding that the officer in question was “perfectly honourable”.
O’Neill also slammed the Filkin Report into press-police relations as “patronising and ultimately dangerous for future accountability of the police”. He compared a passage of the report to “an East German Ministry of Information manual”, arguing that the document has “already created a climate of fear in which police officers —who may want to pass on information that is in the public but not the corporate interest — are afraid to talk to the press.”
He added that report was insulting to female reporters, saying that it implied crime correspondents were “a bunch of women in short skirts flirting”.
“An aggressive and inquisitive press is one of the mechanisms society has for holding the police to account and contact between journalists and officers is just one of the ways we do that,” O’Neill wrote in his witness statement.
“Allowing chief officers to clamp down in a draconian manner on the flow of information, as Filkin recommends, would be a retrograde step.”
O’Neill said he felt now was the time for more information and scrutiny around policing and more open channels of communication.
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15 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry
A leaked Daily Mail story about advances in the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence undermined the probe into the teenager’s death, the Leveson Inquiry heard this morning.
The Metropolitan police’s DCI Clive Driscoll, who led the re-opened inquiry into the teenager’s murder, described a November 2007 meeting he sought to hold in secret with Stephen’s mother, Doreen, and her lawyers.
Driscoll said while he was on the train home that evening, he received a phone call saying a story following the meeting would be running in the Daily Mail the next day.
“Stephen’s family were distraught about this,” Driscoll wrote in his witness statement, adding that the story “undermined” the Met’s relationship with the Lawrence family. “When this happened it was almost like going back to square one,” he wrote.
“Every time a story leaked to the press I had to repair relations with the family,” he wrote, adding later that the volume of leaks led him to believe that “someone was deliberately attempting to disrupt the investigation”.
Driscoll said he had “nothing but respect” for Stephen Wright, the Mail journalist whose name appeared on the November 2007 story. “No-one has tried harder, no organisation has tried harder to bring justice to Stephen’s parents,” Driscoll said, “but we were getting there, and it was undermining that inquiry, and I can’t understand that.”
“I have admiration with what the paper did in supporting the family, I have admiration in Mr Wright pursuing it. The bit I can’t understand is why, when you get there, you would then do anything to undermine it.”
Driscoll says he does not know who leaked the story about the meeting to the Mail. As a result, “everyone became a suspect”.
He added that Wright was spoken to by the police following the story and did not write a second piece. The journalist also maintained that the article did not come from a police source.
“I do not believe Mr Wright would have done anything to deliberately undermine the investigation,” Driscoll wrote.
The officer also thanked the paper for choosing not to publish another piece related to the Lawrence inquiry, which he said would have had “a serious consequence on the investigation we were planning.”
Driscoll admitted that the nature of Lawrence’s murder in 1993 — one of the “defining murders of its time”, he said — meant it would always generate a certain amount of press interest. In his written evidence he noted that a “significant amount” of information about the investigation was being leaked to the media, namely the News of the World, in October 2007. “This was incredibly damaging,” he wrote.
Also in the witness box this morning was the Sun’s crime editor, Mike Sullivan, who said he believes that the Metropolitan police have grading charts on individual journalists with a marking system to show the favourability of the coverage towards the police. Yet the Met’s counsel, Neil Garnham QC, denied this was the case.
Sullivan also criticised the Filkin report into press-police relations for its “patronising” tone towards journalists, adding that he does not know any journalists who will “pour alcohol” down sources’ necks to get a story.
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