TMCnet News
Dowler hacking puts former editor in spotlight: Police investigation turns to events on Brooks' watch Did News International chief know about abuses?(Guardian (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The disclosure that Milly Dowler's voicemail was hacked may refocus scrutiny on the chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks. Most of the evidence that officers of the Yard's Operation Weeting are studying, deals with the News of the World's activity during 2005 and 2006, by which time Brooks had left the paper to edit the Sun. But the Dowler episode happened on her watch - and it is not the only incident that has made her a person of interest for the inquiry. One of her first acts on taking over as editor of the News of the World in 2000 was to bring back Greg Miskiw from New York, where he had just arrived as US correspondent, to appoint him as her assistant editor in charge of news. It was Miskiw who then hired a full-time private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who proceeded to steal confidential data and hack voicemail in order to provide stories for the paper. Miskiw was subsequently questioned by police about allegations that he used other contacts to purchase information from the police national computer and to pay cash bribes direct to employees of mobile phone companies. Miskiw was not charged with any offence. While Rebekah Brooks was in the editor's chair, the News of the World regularly hired Steve Whittamore, the Hampshire private investigator who ran a network of specialists who stole confidential data from British Telecom, mobile phone companies and the DVLA. Records published by the Information Commissioner's Office show that 23 journalists from the News of the World hired Whittamore a total of 228 times (including for the purchase of addresses and ex-directory numbers relating to Milly Dowler's disappearance.) Also during Brooks' editorship, a former detective, who had been forced out of the Metropolitan police after a corruption inquiry, carried cash bribes to serving police officers on behalf of the paper, according to journalists who worked there at the time. In evidence to a Commons select committee, in March 2003, just after she left the News of the World, Brooks said: "We have paid the police for information in the past." She has since written to the committee to say she knows of no specific example. Journalists who worked at the News of the World say that their use of private investigators was routine, open and officially sanctioned. The former showbusiness reporter, Sean Hoare, who worked there under Rebekah Brooks, last year told the New York Times that he was actively encouraged to hack into voicemail by her deputy, Andy Coulson. The Guardian has seen invoices submitted by Whittamore which explicitly record apparently illegal acts. One of Brooks's assistant editors, Paul McMullan, told the Guardian last year that he personally had commissioned several hundred acts which could be regarded as unlawful and that senior editors were aware of this. Scotland Yard will want to establish whether, as an editor, Brooks approved the use of her budget for illegal ends; and whether she knowingly published stories which had been obtained by unlawful means. In addition, she is one of the 23 journalists named in Whittamore's records, allegedly for commissioning access to confidential data from a mobile phone company. Police will want to know whether this happened and, if so, whether it was lawful. The truth may lie in the mass of evidence which is now available to Scotland Yard: 11,000 pages of notes seized from Mulcaire; call data provided by mobile phone inquiries during the first inquiry into Mulcaire in 2006; an archive of email which News International has handed to police; as well as material seized recently from the homes and offices of three senior NoW journalists who have been arrested. Captions: Former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks is now chief executive of News International Photograph: Yui Mok/PA (c) 2011 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |