Report: UK tabloid hacked into voicemails

[seemslikeadream]

[Stephen Morgan]

Sky isn't the country's largest broadcaster, the Beeb is. More viewers, bigger budget. Murdoch was ordered to sell his stake in ITV by the competition commission, still hasn't got round to it. Supposedly waiting until he can make a profit on it, which won't be this side of doomsday. And Bercow and Hunt are cunts. Even Humphrys calles Hunt a cunt, and Bercow wasn't even supported by his own party at the last election.

[coffin_dodger]

@ Ahab - great links, thanks. I'm in the UK, by the way.

I hadn't heard of the Morgan killing in 1987. I may be misreading what is being presented to us - is the inference being made that this PI was killed by either the police (or underworld gangs allied with the police), then the NotW hounded the investigating police officer at the behest of the corrupt police within the Met? This is truly disturbing. I sense it may be even more convoluted than we have heard, yet.

It's a strange feeling when you have known for so long in your heart that our society (especially the cosy relationship between politicians, bankers and corporations) is so totally corrupt, but so rarely hear about it in the media. This 'scandal' (I hesitate to call it a scandal, as that just doesn't give it the gravitas it deserves) reaches right in to the core of our daily lives.

Corrupt Prime Minister working hand in hand with global Media corp working hand in hand with a corrupt police force. It's going to be too much for many people in this country to face. Cognitive Dissonance time for many, methinks.

Where do we start to clean up this mess, when the people with all the power are the villains?

[gnosticheresy_2]

Mindblowing, really. I mean, mindblowing that this has actually been reported on mainstream telly. Rebekah Brooks could quite concievably have her erse oot the windae, as they say. And then questions will be asked about what James Murdoch knew. It could even end up at the door of the Old Man, though he'd still have Coulson to throw under the bus first, I suppose. But the more people are thrown under the bus - like Glen Mulcaire - the more they talk, and the bigger it all gets.

Mindblowing is not an exaggeration. I can't really recall the last time so many people were genuinely this angry about something. I don't know if non-UK people are picking up on how big a shitstorm this is - the Guardian were still liveblogging this at 11.40pm last night as new revelations were coming in almost by the minute even at that time

Also mindblowing that Hugh Grant is fast becoming my favourite celebrity.

Yes! As someone said on Twitter yesterday "I can't decide which is worse, the behaviour of NOTW or the fact that I now respect Hugh Grant"

And Tommy Sheridan's in jail for perjury while Andy Coulson, who testified against him, walks free.

Tommy Sheridan 'might not have been jailed' if e-mails were seen at perjury trial

CRUCIAL e-mails at the heart of the Tommy Sheridan perjury case that were said to have been lost in India have been found at a warehouse in London.
The discovery of the "suppressed" messages about the News of the World's investigation into the disgraced former Scottish Socialist Party leader puts huge pressure on the newspaper to release the information, which Sheridan's legal team claims could have been key during last year's trial.

Police have now been urged to launch an investigation into whether the jury was misled. Scottish News of the World editor Bob Bird gave evidence at the trial that e-mails sent about the newspaper's investigation into the former Glasgow MSP had been "shipped to Mumbai".

The Scotsman has learned that the UK Information Commissioner has ruled that the e-mails were not lost in India, as Mr Bird had claimed, and that there were "continuing concerns" about some evidence.

Sheridan was convicted of five counts of perjury relating to evidence he gave in his civil court battle against the Scottish News of The World.

His legal team had demanded sight of the e-mails sent between the Scottish News of the World and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who was jailed in 2007 for hacking into the phones of celebrities and other prominent people and selling the information to the newspaper.

more here:

http://www.scotsman.com/news/Tommy-Sher ... 6795925.jp

[gnosticheresy_2]

"I'd shoot the bugger if I could"

[MacCruiskeen]

Steve Bell on Rupert Murdoch, (News of the World editor-in-chief) Rebekah Brooks, and phone hacking. Rebekah Brooks has said it's "inconceivable" (sic) that she knew of the Milly Dowler phone hacking.

[stefano]

From one of the articles vk posted:

Vince Cable was stripped of his power to take the decision after he was covertly recorded by Daily Telegraph journalists as saying he had "declared war on Murdoch" last December.

Funny passive voice there - Wade's good buddy David Cameron seems to have taken that decision unilaterally?

[gnosticheresy_2]

Tom Watson MP this afternoon in the House of Commons referring to the case Ahab posted about earlier

I want to inform the House of further evidence that suggests Rebekah Brooks knew about the unlawful tactics of News of the World as early as 2002, despite all her denials yesterday. Rebekah Brooks was present at a meeting with Scotland Yard when police officers pursing a murder investigation provided her with evidence that her newspaper was interfering with the pursuit of justice. They gave her the name of another executive at News International, Alex Marunchak. The meeting, which included Dick Fedorcio of the Metropolitan police, told her that News of the World staff were guilty of interference and party to using unlawful means to attempt to discredit a police officer and his wife. She was told of actions by people she paid to expose and discredit David Cook and his wife Jackie Haines so that Mr Cook would be prevented from completing an investigation into a murder. News International were paying people to interfer with police officers and were doing so on behalf of known criminals. We know now that News International had entered the criminal underworld.

She cannot deny being present at this meeting when the actions of people she was paying were exposed. She cannot deny now being warned that under her auspices unlawful tactics were being used with the purpose of interfering with the pursuit of justice. She cannot deny that one of her staff, Alex Marunchak, was named and involved. She cannot deny either that she was told by the police that her own paper was using unlawful tactics, in this case to help one of her law-breaking investigators. This in my views shows her culpability goes beyond taking the blame as head of the organisation. It is about direct knowledge of unlawful behaviour.

And was Mr Marunchak dismissed. No. He was promoted.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog ... e#block-57

[Byrne]

Ahab/coffin_dodger,

There is some info about the Daniel Morgan murder case here:
http://z13.invisionfree.com/julyseventh ... topic=2982

I agree, there is something very fishy about this case.

[Searcher08]

The interview of the News International "Director of Corporate Affairs" (*) by Jon Snow was the most 'trying to nail jelly to a tree' interview since the famous Paxman vs Michael Howard.

I just invented this quote, but it gives a good flavour...

"Wade has no conflict of interest here, will not be resigning and is as appalled as everyone else at the shocking SHOCKING nature of these allegations which are not facts just hearsay with NO proof at all but will be investigated allthough they are not proved in anyway at all and she will search high and low for wrong doing and if she finds she did wrong, shall leave no stone unturned to find out what it was the she err... herself.. did and will conduct extensive interviews with herself and, if she thinks more are needed, will order herself to investigate herself err even more..."

[coffin_dodger]

@ Byrne - wow. Just wow. Thanks for that link. Holy shit, it's all falling in to place.

So, it looks like the policeman who was part of the successful plot to murder Daniel Morgan was then assigned to investigate his murder. Handy, eh? Once the suspicion fell on that policeman, desperate measures were then called for, the Met continued to try to pin it on Morgans business partner, even though they had no evidence, which then fell apart.

The NotW must have owed the Met big time to get involved with this coverup. Or is there something else going on?

Whilst I am fully aware that we live in a world full of corruption, it still scares me when we have to confront it, and the implications of it.

[Stephen Morgan]

Odd. I see that Bellfield, the murderer, has accused daddy Dowler of being a "nonce" and has said "he was also a nonce, the whole family were".

[gnosticheresy_2]

News of the World surveillance of detective: what Rebekah Brooks knew

As editor of the News of the World Rebekah Brooks was confronted with evidence that her paper's resources had been used on behalf of two murder suspects to spy on the senior detective who was investigating their alleged crime.

Brooks was summoned to a meeting at Scotland Yard where she was told that one of her most senior journalists, Alex Marunchak, had apparently agreed to use photographers and vans leased to the paper to run surveillance on behalf of Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery, two private investigators who were suspected of murdering their former partner, Daniel Morgan. The Yard saw this as a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice.

Brooks was also told of evidence that Marunchak had a corrupt relationship with Rees, who had been earning up to £150,000 a year selling confidential data to the News of the World. Police told her that a former employee of Rees had given them a statement alleging that some of these payments were diverted to Marunchak, who had been able to pay off his credit card and pay his child's private school fees.

A Guardian investigation suggests that surveillance of Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook involved the News of the World physically following him and his young children, "blagging" his personal details from police databases, attempting to access his voicemail and that of his wife, and possibly sending a "Trojan horse" email in an attempt to steal information from his computer.

The targeting of Cook began following his appearance on BBC Crimewatch on 26 June 2002, when he appealed for information to solve the murder of Morgan, who had been found dead in south London 15 years earlier. Rees and Fillery were among the suspects. The following day, Cook was warned by the Yard that they had picked up intelligence that Fillery had been in touch with Marunchak and that Marunchak agreed to "sort Cook out".

A few days later, Cook was contacted by Surrey police, where he had worked as a senior detective from 1996 to 2001, and was told that somebody claiming to work for the Inland Revenue had contacted their finance department, asking for Cook's home address so that they could send him a cheque with a tax refund. The finance department had been suspicious and refused to give out the information.

It is now known that at that time, the News of the World's investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, succeeded in obtaining Cook's home address, his internal payroll number at the Metropolitan police, his date of birth and figures for the amount that he and his wife were paying for their mortgage. All of this appears to have been blagged by Mulcaire from confidential databases, apparently including the Met's own records.

Mulcaire obtained the mobile phone number for Cook's wife and the password she used for her mobile phone account.

Paperwork in the possession of the Yard's Operation Weeting is believed to show that Mulcaire did this on the instructions of Greg Miskiw, the paper's assistant editor and a close friend of Marunchak.

About a week later, a van was seen parked outside Cook's home. The following day, two vans were seen there. Both of them attempted to follow Cook as he took his two-year-old son to nursery. Cook alerted Scotland Yard, who sent a uniformed officer to stop one of the vans on the grounds that its rear brake light was broken. The driver proved to be a photojournalist working for the News of the World. Both vans were leased to the paper. During the same week, there were signs of an attempt to open letters which had been left in Cook's external postbox.

Scotland Yard chose not to mount a formal inquiry. Instead a senior press officer contacted Brooks to ask for an explanation. She is understood to have told them they were investigating a report that Cook was having an affair with another officer, Jacqui Hames, the presenter of BBC Crimewatch. Yard sources say they rejected this explanation, because Cook had been married to Hames for some years; the couple had two children, then aged two and five; and they had previously appeared together as a married couple in published stories."The story was complete rubbish," according to one source.

For four months, the Yard took no action, raising questions about whether they were willing to pursue what appeared to be an attempt to interfere with a murder inquiry. However, in November 2002, at a press social event at Scotland Yard, Brooks was asked to come into a side room for a meeting. She was confronted by Cook, his boss, Commander Andre Baker, and Dick Fedorcio, the head of media relations. According to a Yard source, Cook described the surveillance on his home and the apparent involvement of Marunchak, and evidence of Marunchak's suspect financial relationship with Rees. Brooks is said to have defended Marunchak on the grounds that he did his job well.

Scotland Yard took no further action, apparently reflecting the desire of Fedorcio, who has had a close working relationship with Brooks, to avoid unnecessary friction with the News of the World. In March Marunchak was named by BBC Panorama as the News of the World executive who hired a specialist to plant a Trojan on the computer of a former British intelligence officer, Ian Hurst.

Rees and Fillery were eventually arrested and charged in relation to the murder of Morgan. Charges against both men were later dropped, although Rees was convicted of plotting to plant cocaine on a woman so that her ex-husband would get custody of their children, and Fillery was convicted of possessing indecent images of children.

Cook and his wife are believed to be preparing a legal action against the News of the World, Marunchak, Miskiw and Mulcaire. Operation Weeting is also understood to be investigating.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/ju ... kah-brooks

[hanshan]

Mindblowing, really. I mean, mindblowing that this has actually been reported on mainstream telly. Rebekah Brooks could quite concievably have her erse oot the windae, as they say. And then questions will be asked about what James Murdoch knew. It could even end up at the door of the Old Man, though he'd still have Coulson to throw under the bus first, I suppose. But the more people are thrown under the bus - like Glen Mulcaire - the more they talk, and the bigger it all gets.

Mindblowing is not an exaggeration. I can't really recall the last time so many people were genuinely this angry about something. I don't know if non-UK people are picking up on how big a shitstorm this is - the Guardian were still liveblogging this at 11.40pm last night as new revelations were coming in almost by the minute even at that time

And Tommy Sheridan's in jail for perjury while Andy Coulson, who testified against him, walks free.

Tommy Sheridan 'might not have been jailed' if e-mails were seen at perjury trial

CRUCIAL e-mails at the heart of the Tommy Sheridan perjury case that were said to have been lost in India have been found at a warehouse in London.
The discovery of the "suppressed" messages about the News of the World's investigation into the disgraced former Scottish Socialist Party leader puts huge pressure on the newspaper to release the information, which Sheridan's legal team claims could have been key during last year's trial.

Police have now been urged to launch an investigation into whether the jury was misled. Scottish News of the World editor Bob Bird gave evidence at the trial that e-mails sent about the newspaper's investigation into the former Glasgow MSP had been "shipped to Mumbai".

The Scotsman has learned that the UK Information Commissioner has ruled that the e-mails were not lost in India, as Mr Bird had claimed, and that there were "continuing concerns" about some evidence.

Sheridan was convicted of five counts of perjury relating to evidence he gave in his civil court battle against the Scottish News of The World.

His legal team had demanded sight of the e-mails sent between the Scottish News of the World and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who was jailed in 2007 for hacking into the phones of celebrities and other prominent people and selling the information to the newspaper.

more here:

http://www.scotsman.com/news/Tommy-Sher ... 6795925.jp

Not really. Kinda like watching cricket thinking it's just Brit croquet.

Tom Watson MP this afternoon in the House of Commons referring to the case Ahab posted about earlier

I want to inform the House of further evidence that suggests Rebekah Brooks knew about the unlawful tactics of News of the World as early as 2002, despite all her denials yesterday. Rebekah Brooks was present at a meeting with Scotland Yard when police officers pursing a murder investigation provided her with evidence that her newspaper was interfering with the pursuit of justice. They gave her the name of another executive at News International, Alex Marunchak. The meeting, which included Dick Fedorcio of the Metropolitan police, told her that News of the World staff were guilty of interference and party to using unlawful means to attempt to discredit a police officer and his wife. She was told of actions by people she paid to expose and discredit David Cook and his wife Jackie Haines so that Mr Cook would be prevented from completing an investigation into a murder. News International were paying people to interfer with police officers and were doing so on behalf of known criminals. We know now that News International had entered the criminal underworld.

She cannot deny being present at this meeting when the actions of people she was paying were exposed. She cannot deny now being warned that under her auspices unlawful tactics were being used with the purpose of interfering with the pursuit of justice. She cannot deny that one of her staff, Alex Marunchak, was named and involved. She cannot deny either that she was told by the police that her own paper was using unlawful tactics, in this case to help one of her law-breaking investigators. This in my views shows her culpability goes beyond taking the blame as head of the organisation. It is about direct knowledge of unlawful behaviour.

And was Mr Marunchak dismissed. No. He was promoted.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog ... e#block-57

Unreal. Guess it's universal: if ya can't beat 'em, join 'em.

@ Byrne - wow. Just wow. Thanks for that link. Holy shit, it's all falling in to place.

So, it looks like the policeman who was part of the successful plot to murder Daniel Morgan was then assigned to investigate his murder. Handy, eh? Once the suspicion fell on that policeman, desperate measures were then called for, the Met continued to try to pin it on Morgans business partner, even though they had no evidence, which then fell apart.

The NotW must have owed the Met big time to get involved with this coverup. Or is there something else going on?

Whilst I am fully aware that we live in a world full of corruption, it still scares me when we have to confront it, and the implications of it.

****

@ Ahab - great links, thanks. I'm in the UK, by the way.

I hadn't heard of the Morgan killing in 1987. I may be misreading what is being presented to us - is the inference being made that this PI was killed by either the police (or underworld gangs allied with the police), then the NotW hounded the investigating police officer at the behest of the corrupt police within the Met? This is truly disturbing. I sense it may be even more convoluted than we have heard, yet.

It's a strange feeling when you have known for so long in your heart that our society (especially the cosy relationship between politicians, bankers and corporations) is so totally corrupt, but so rarely hear about it in the media. This 'scandal' (I hesitate to call it a scandal, as that just doesn't give it the gravitas it deserves) reaches right in to the core of our daily lives.

Corrupt Prime Minister working hand in hand with global Media corp working hand in hand with a corrupt police force. It's going to be too much for many people in this country to face. Cognitive Dissonance time for many, methinks.

Where do we start to clean up this mess, when the people with all the power are the villains?

Oh well. Some dissonance here, some there.

Sky isn't the country's largest broadcaster, the Beeb is. More viewers, bigger budget. Murdoch was ordered to sell his stake in ITV by the competition commission, still hasn't got round to it. Supposedly waiting until he can make a profit on it, which won't be this side of doomsday. And Bercow and Hunt are cunts. Even Humphrys calles Hunt a cunt, and Bercow wasn't even supported by his own party at the last election.

Heh. Other side of doomsday.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/05/milly-dowler-phone-hacking-cameron

News International are in the shit now, for those unfamiliar with this update to the phone-hacking saga which the Guardian broke yesterday evening: private investigator working for the News of the World hacked the voicemail of then missing (and later found to be murdered) schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

They also hacked the phones of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, the victims of Ian Huntley (I believe he is guilty of that crime, for the record, contra Dave MacGowan - though no doubt the NOTW hacked Huntley and Maxine Carr's phones as well, which, even if it had led directly to their capture, would've still been wrong. And illegal obviously).

Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for the McCanns, says he was hacked too, probably by the Express or Mirror. I believe him on that, which is the first time I've believed him on anything, and likely the last too.

Remember Max Mosley as well - filmed by the News Of The World being flogged by prostitutes, one of whom just happened to be married to an MI5 officer. It's a dirty job alright.

Damn. (to use vernacular)

On the Beeb? Sheesh. What we've missed. Where's the D notice?

Odd. I see that Bellfield, the murderer, has accused daddy Dowler of being a "nonce" and has said "he was also a nonce, the whole family were".

play together, stay together. or is it birds of a feather...?


...

...

[MacCruiskeen]

News of the World surveillance of detective: what Rebekah Brooks knew

As editor of the News of the World Rebekah Brooks was confronted with evidence that her paper's resources had been used on behalf of two murder suspects to spy on the senior detective who was investigating their alleged crime.

Brooks was summoned to a meeting at Scotland Yard where she was told that one of her most senior journalists, Alex Marunchak, had apparently agreed to use photographers and vans leased to the paper to run surveillance on behalf of Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery, two private investigators who were suspected of murdering their former partner, Daniel Morgan. The Yard saw this as a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice.

Brooks was also told of evidence that Marunchak had a corrupt relationship with Rees, who had been earning up to £150,000 a year selling confidential data to the News of the World. Police told her that a former employee of Rees had given them a statement alleging that some of these payments were diverted to Marunchak, who had been able to pay off his credit card and pay his child's private school fees.

A Guardian investigation suggests that surveillance of Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook involved the News of the World physically following him and his young children, "blagging" his personal details from police databases, attempting to access his voicemail and that of his wife, and possibly sending a "Trojan horse" email in an attempt to steal information from his computer.

The targeting of Cook began following his appearance on BBC Crimewatch on 26 June 2002, when he appealed for information to solve the murder of Morgan, who had been found dead in south London 15 years earlier. Rees and Fillery were among the suspects. The following day, Cook was warned by the Yard that they had picked up intelligence that Fillery had been in touch with Marunchak and that Marunchak agreed to "sort Cook out".

A few days later, Cook was contacted by Surrey police, where he had worked as a senior detective from 1996 to 2001, and was told that somebody claiming to work for the Inland Revenue had contacted their finance department, asking for Cook's home address so that they could send him a cheque with a tax refund. The finance department had been suspicious and refused to give out the information.

It is now known that at that time, the News of the World's investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, succeeded in obtaining Cook's home address, his internal payroll number at the Metropolitan police, his date of birth and figures for the amount that he and his wife were paying for their mortgage. All of this appears to have been blagged by Mulcaire from confidential databases, apparently including the Met's own records.

Mulcaire obtained the mobile phone number for Cook's wife and the password she used for her mobile phone account.

Paperwork in the possession of the Yard's Operation Weeting is believed to show that Mulcaire did this on the instructions of Greg Miskiw, the paper's assistant editor and a close friend of Marunchak.

About a week later, a van was seen parked outside Cook's home. The following day, two vans were seen there. Both of them attempted to follow Cook as he took his two-year-old son to nursery. Cook alerted Scotland Yard, who sent a uniformed officer to stop one of the vans on the grounds that its rear brake light was broken. The driver proved to be a photojournalist working for the News of the World. Both vans were leased to the paper. During the same week, there were signs of an attempt to open letters which had been left in Cook's external postbox.

Scotland Yard chose not to mount a formal inquiry. Instead a senior press officer contacted Brooks to ask for an explanation. She is understood to have told them they were investigating a report that Cook was having an affair with another officer, Jacqui Hames, the presenter of BBC Crimewatch. Yard sources say they rejected this explanation, because Cook had been married to Hames for some years; the couple had two children, then aged two and five; and they had previously appeared together as a married couple in published stories."The story was complete rubbish," according to one source.

For four months, the Yard took no action, raising questions about whether they were willing to pursue what appeared to be an attempt to interfere with a murder inquiry. However, in November 2002, at a press social event at Scotland Yard, Brooks was asked to come into a side room for a meeting. She was confronted by Cook, his boss, Commander Andre Baker, and Dick Fedorcio, the head of media relations. According to a Yard source, Cook described the surveillance on his home and the apparent involvement of Marunchak, and evidence of Marunchak's suspect financial relationship with Rees. Brooks is said to have defended Marunchak on the grounds that he did his job well.

Scotland Yard took no further action, apparently reflecting the desire of Fedorcio, who has had a close working relationship with Brooks, to avoid unnecessary friction with the News of the World. In March Marunchak was named by BBC Panorama as the News of the World executive who hired a specialist to plant a Trojan on the computer of a former British intelligence officer, Ian Hurst.

Rees and Fillery were eventually arrested and charged in relation to the murder of Morgan. Charges against both men were later dropped, although Rees was convicted of plotting to plant cocaine on a woman so that her ex-husband would get custody of their children, and Fillery was convicted of possessing indecent images of children.

Cook and his wife are believed to be preparing a legal action against the News of the World, Marunchak, Miskiw and Mulcaire. Operation Weeting is also understood to be investigating.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/ju ... kah-brooks

jesus christ almighty. That entire article should be in 180-point, bold type and bright red.

It really repays close reading.