Metropolitan Police role in the news media phone hacking scandal

This article provides a narrative beginning in 1999 of investigations by the Metropolitan Police Service (Met) of Greater London into the illegal acquisition of confidential information by agents in collaboration with the news media that is commonly referred to as the phone hacking scandal.

The first three investigations, involving phone taps and seizure of records, successfully gathered large quantities of evidence that confidential information was being acquired illegally, sometimes with the help of public officials including policemen.

[6] Rees and others whose voices were recorded during Operation Nigeria (including Austin Warnes, Duncan Hanrahan, Martin King, Tom Kingston, Sid Fillery) were successfully prosecuted and sentenced to jail for various offenses unrelated to illegal acquisition of confidential information.

[7] One of the Met's officers investigating the murder charges, Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook, was warned by Surrey Police and Scotland Yard that he may have become a surveillance target of Sid Fillery.

Fillery reportedly used his relationship with Alex Marunchak to arrange for Glenn Mulcaire, then doing work for News of the World, to obtain 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.

According to Nick Davies, reporter for The Guardian, the Met collected hundreds of thousands of documents during the investigations into Jonathan Rees over his links with corrupt officers and over his alleged murder of Daniel Morgan.

[14] Between February 2004 and April 2005, the Crown Prosecution Service, then headed by DPP Ken Macdonald, charged ten men working for private detective agencies with crimes relating to the illegal acquisition of confidential information.

The precise nature of the guidance given by CPS to the Met became the subject of public disagreement between them in 2011, at which time it was noted, among other things, that the charges brought against Goodman and Mulcaire included counts where there was no evidence provided regarding whether messages had already been heard or not.

[33][34] During their court proceedings, a small number of other victims of Mulcaire's phone hacking were mentioned, including Sky Andrew, Max Clifford, Simon Hughes, Elle Macpherson, and Gordon Taylor.

[45][46] Eventually, as queries continued to come in from celebrities and politicians asking if they had been victims of hacking, Yates directed that the evidence from the Mulcaire raid that had been in stored in trash bags for three years be entered into a computer database.

[23] On 1 September 2010, The New York Times published a lengthy article by Don Van Natta Jr., Jo Becker, and Graham Bowley echoing the Committee's concerns and specifically contradicting testimony made by former News of the World editor Andy Coulson in which he claimed not to be aware of phone hacking.

This contradicted testimony to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee by newspaper executives and senior Met officials that Mulcaire acted on his own and that there was no evidence of hacking by other than him and a single "rogue reporter," namely Clive Goodman.

Within five weeks of this article appearing, Ian Edmundson was suspended from News of the World,[51] Andy Coulson resigned as Chief Press Secretary to David Cameron,[52][53] the Crown Prosecution Service began a review of evidence it had,[54] and the Met renewed its investigation into phone hacking, something it had declined to do since 2007.

[65][66] The new Met Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, took the unusual step of asking a team from an outside police force, the Durham Constabulary headed by Jon Stoddart, to review the work of Operation Weeting.

These included Rebekah Brooks,[68] Andy Coulson,[69] Neil Wallis,[70] Stuart Kuttner,[71] Greg Miskiw,[5][72] James Desborough,[73] Dan Evans,[74] Ross Hall,[75][76] and The Times deputy editor Raoul Simons.

All eight were charged regarding illegal interception of communications relating to specific individuals[83][84] After Jonathan Rees was released from prison in 2005, he resumed private investigative work for News of the World, then under the leadership of Andy Coulson.

Hurst's personal computer was allegedly hacked by Marunchak with a Trojan programme which copied emails and relayed them to the hacker who in turn passed them along to newspaper personnel, putting the agent at risk.

In his testimony to the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 19 July 2011, News International's James Murdoch claimed to have relied on this letter containing "outside legal advice from senior counsel” to publicly maintain that the phone hacking had been the work of a single "rogue reporter," namely Goodman.

[5][21] After the 2006 imprisonment of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, and with assurances from News International executive and senior Metropolitan Police officials that a thorough investigation of evidence identified only these two as being involved in phone hacking, the public perception was that the matter was closed.

[103] By early July 2011, Metropolitan Police Service commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson was facing questions and accusations from several quarters about potential conflicts of interest arising from his social relationships with News International executives.

Commentators observed that the personal relationships among individuals variously in law enforcement, news media, and political institutions may have compromised principles and judgments, sometimes leading to inappropriate favors and even illegal payments.

For example, News Corporation Chairman in Europe, James Murdoch dined at the Prime Minister's official country residence during the period that he was promoting the company's bid for British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSkyB).

It was speculated during a Parliamentary Debate in September 2010, that, if Andy Hayman, the Met officer who headed the phone hacking 2006 investigation, had been placed in charge of the Watergate inquiry, "President Nixon would have safely served a full term.

Assistant commissioner John Yates claimed that the Met was guided by advice from the CPS, then headed by Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Ken Macdonald, that "phone hacking was only an offence if messages had been intercepted before they were listened to by the intended recipient.

"[23] The New York Times further observed that, such interviews, combined with testimony before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, indicated that “the police agency and News International … became so intertwined that they wound up sharing the goal of containing the investigation.

During the 1990s, Jonathan Rees reportedly had a network of sources within the Metropolitan Police Service, including serving officers, providing him with confidential information that he sold at a profit to news media organizations.

[141][142] In contrast, John Yates told the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee in September 2009 that the police had only found evidence indicating that "it is very few, it is a handful" of persons that had been subject to message interception.

[23] Not only were potential victims denied the opportunity to check the call data, which the phone companies only keep for 12 months, they also did not become aware of the desirability of changing their access codes or of considering what damage might have been done to them as a result of interception.

[144] Only after The Guardian's article of July 2009 making public the details of the settlement News of the World made with Max Clifford was there a broad initiative by solicitors and barristers to force disclosure of phone hacking evidence held by the Met since at least August 2006.

[25] This same narrow interpretation was used by the Met when it assured everyone that all affected individuals had been notified by claiming the police had taken all appropriate action to ensure that people were informed where ever there was evidence of their being subject of any form of phone tapping.