Brooks contacted Dowler's PIs herself

News of the World hacking row escalates

Mr Coulson went on to work for David Cameron as director of communications at 10 Downing Street

New allegations have emerged of payments to the police as the row around the News of the World escalates.

The paper's owners have passed to the police e-mails which appear to show that payments were authorised by the then editor, Andy Coulson.

It comes as a solicitor representing some of the relatives of people who died in the 7/7 bombings says families may have been victims of hacking.

MPs will hold an emergency debate in the House of Commons later.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said the e-mail disclosure was "a significant development".

He said it had an important political dimension, in that Mr Coulson went on to work for David Cameron as director of communications at 10 Downing Street. Mr Coulson resigned from that post in January.

Our correspondent said it also shows that the police investigation into alleged illicit techniques used by the News of the World to obtain stories goes much wider than an examination of the hacking of mobile phones.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said Mr Cameron will have returned from Afghanistan to find himself "at the centre of the row about media ethics, the power of the Murdoch empire and his own judgement in hiring Andy Coulson".

Cambridgeshire Police said Met detectives visited the parents of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman
The latest developments came after allegations private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, working for the News of the World, hacked the phone of murdered girl Milly Dowler when she was missing.

News International has promised the "strongest possible action" if it is proven Milly's phone was hacked.

Milly Dowler, who was 13, went missing in March 2002 near her home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Her remains were found in remote woodland at Yateley Heath in Hampshire six months later.

Nightclub doorman Levi Bellfield was convicted of the murder last month.

The Guardian has claimed Mulcaire intercepted messages left by relatives for Milly while she was missing and that the News of the World deleted some messages it had already listened to in order to make space for more to be left.

In a statement released to the Guardian on Tuesday, Mulcaire made no direct reference to those allegations but apologised "to anybody who was hurt or upset by what I have done".

The parents of murdered Soham girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman have been contacted by police investigating phone-hacking by journalists.

Torin Douglas
BBC media correspondent
The News of the World has already started paying compensation for phone-hacking. Now it's facing another financial penalty - a loss of advertising.

Following the Milly Dowler allegations, Ford has suspended its advertisements, saying "it cares about the standards of behaviour of those it deals with externally".

Halifax and Npower say they are reviewing their options. Tesco and Virgin Media say they're awaiting the outcome of the police investigations.

Many will applaud Ford's action. But should advertisers use their financial muscle to try to influence the behaviour of the media? It is not usually regarded as a good thing for big business to threaten newspapers and broadcasters, particularly over editorial issues.

There have been exceptions. Carphone Warehouse stopped sponsoring Channel 4's Big Brother, following allegations of racism towards Shilpa Shetty. It's the advertisers' money - but are they the right people to tell the media how to behave?

BBC business editor Robert Peston said police are investigating whether the phone of Jessica's father, Leslie Chapman, was hacked by the press.

Jessica and Holly, both 10, of Soham, Cambridgeshire, were murdered in 2002 by school caretaker Ian Huntley, who was jailed for life.

Clifford Tibber, a solicitor representing some of the relatives of people who died in 7/7, said one family had been contacted and told that their phones were hacked back in 2005.

Graham Foulkes, whose son died in the 7/7 bombings, has told the BBC he was contacted by police on Tuesday after his details were found on a list as part of the police investigation in hacking claims.

Meanwhile motor company Ford has announced a halt on advertising in the News of the World, pending the newspaper's investigation and response over the phone-hacking claims.

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow has granted an urgent debate into whether there should be a public inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal.

This follows a call by Labour MP Chris Bryant, who accused the News of the World of "playing God with a family's emotions".

Also on Wednesday, the Media Standards Trust - which aims to promote high news standards within the media - will launch the Hacked Off campaign calling for a public inquiry into "phone hacking and other forms of illegal intrusion by the press".

The Metropolitan Police launched Operation Weeting in January this year after new phone-hacking claims emerged. The force has faced criticism for its initial inquiry in 2006 into phone-hacking at the paper.

That probe led to the convictions and imprisonment of Mulcaire and then News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman in 2007 for conspiracy to access phone messages left for members of the royal household.

A number of alleged phone-hacking victims have since reached out-of-court settlements with the newspaper.

News of the World surveillance of detective: what Rebekah Brooks knew
Brooks summoned to meeting with Scotland Yard to be told her journalists had spied on behalf of murder suspects

Nick Davies
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 July 2011 19.47 BST
Article history

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.

@BBCNews

News International's James #Murdoch: 'I am satisified in Rebekah Brooks, her leadership, her standard of conduct and ethics are very good'
half a minute ago via TweetDeck

carmen wrote:

@BBCNews

News International's James #Murdoch: 'I am satisified in Rebekah Brooks, her leadership, her standard of conduct and ethics are very good'
half a minute ago via TweetDeck

tw@t

almostgothic wrote:

carmen wrote:

@BBCNews

News International's James #Murdoch: 'I am satisified in Rebekah Brooks, her leadership, her standard of conduct and ethics are very good'
half a minute ago via TweetDeck

tw@t

When someone makes a public statement like that about a person, they are usually clearing their desk within days ...

almostgothic wrote:Carmen, thanks for the link to that brilliant video.
Nick Davies - my kinda guy!

I was saying to Mr Almostgothic over dinner that this is like watching the downfall of the Roman Empire.
We live in interesting times.
And now karma is beginning to hit the big guys .

@RT @GeorgeMichael: Rebekah Brooks sat 2ft from me in my own home and told me that it was never the public that came to them with information
16 minutes ago via Echofon

Rebekah Brooks: A ruthless, charming super-schmoozer
The meteoric rise of News International's chief executive, from showbiz reporter to Rupert Murdoch's closest 'daughter'

Esther Addley
guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 July 2011 19.57 BST
Article history

Rebekah Brooks: ‘Many people were quite scared of her.’ Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters
In 1997, when she was a 29-year-old feature writer on the News of the World, Rebekah Wade made a trip to Westminster to intercept the Conservative MP Jerry Hayes. The paper was planning to run an exposé of the married MP's affair with his 18-year-old lover, she told him – or as the headline would put it that Sunday: "TORY MP 2-TIMED WIFE WITH UNDER-AGE GAY LOVER".

Hayes was devastated, but found himself so charmed by the young redhead and the sympathetic manner in which she had delivered the news that he later phoned the News of the World to thank them for the way they had handled the story.

Three years later, Wade was the paper's editor. Less than a decade after that she was chief executive of Britain's most powerful newspaper group – a meteoric ascent attributed by close observers to this exceptional, potent cocktail of clear-eyed ruthlessness and dazzling charm.

It is a talent that even those who know or have worked for Rebekah Brooks – as she now is – describe in awed tones. "Andy Coulson often joked that the essence of tabloid journalism is turning someone over one day, and them ringing to thank you the next," recalls one ex-Sun staffer, who worked under both editors. "Rebekah Brooks is the ultimate exponent of that art."

On the evening of November 2, 2005, the day that David Blunkett had been forced to resign from government for the second time in a year, the former minister travelled to the Sun's offices in Wapping to share a drink with the paper's editor. The Sun, the previous year, had been the paper that named Kimberley Quinn, the Spectator's publisher, as Blunkett's lover.

But if such a talent can explain Brooks's meteoric rise, it does not explain the extraordinary tenacity with which she has clung to her job as News International chief – even while James Murdoch was forced to acknowledge "repeated wrongdoing" at the News of the World, admitted NI executives had misled parliament and abolished the biggest selling newspaper in the country. Can it really be the case, as Friday's Independent put it, that the News of the World has been "sacrificed to save one woman"? And if so, why?

The key to understanding Brooks, say those who know or have worked with her, is her breathtaking networking abilities. She is, says one, a "galaxy-class schmoozer. World-class doesn't quite do it justice." Certainly the briefest glance at her social circle reveals a network of establishment connections that few, if any, could match.

To describe her as a friend of David Cameron would be to underestimate their intimacy, say friends. Brooks and her second husband Charlie, a racehorse trainer and old Etonian, live very close to the Camerons in Oxfordshire. They met for dinner at least once over Christmas, and frequently see each other at weekends with what has been termed the "Chipping Norton set" – among them the PR man Matthew Freud and his partner, Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, and Jeremy Clarkson. Brooks has even commented that unlike Murdoch senior she has no need to go to Downing Street for audiences with Cameron, since she sees him so frequently socially.

It is easy to forget that she was just as intimate with Cameron's predecessor, and the man at No 10 before that. Brooks, then Wade, was seen by many as half of a Labour power-couple, thanks to her then husband Ross Kemp's vocal support of the party and their close relationship with the Blairs. So intimate a friend did Cherie Blair consider her, in fact, that she reproached the then editor for attending a party at 11 Downing St, seat of the hated Browns. That cooled as her friendship with the Browns grew closer – Brooks attended a "sleepover" of female friends of Sarah Brown's at Chequers in 2008. Guy (now Lord) Black, ex-director of the Press Complaints Commission, and his partner, Mark Bolland, once Prince Charles's aide, were once holiday companions.

But Brooks's friendships are not only strategic, say intimates, who speak of her tremendously warm, conspiratorial, almost flirtatious manner. A number of former Labour ministers are still good friends, while she has maintained close relationships with, among others, Sarah Payne's family and Sheryl Gascoigne. Max Clifford, one of few willing to speak openly about her, said she was loyal, generous and "very genuine". "I have always found her to be a straight-up person. That is very, very rare in journalism."

Rebekah Wade was born in Daresbury, Cheshire in 1968 and attended Appleton Hall County Grammar school in Warrington. By 14, she had decided she wanted to be a journalist. She worked briefly for an architecture magazine in Paris, and her Who's Who entry states that she studied at the Sorbonne; in fact she took only a short course.

While still a teenager she joined Eddie Shah's short-lived tabloid daily the Post as features secretary. The Private Eye journalist Tim Minogue was one of her editors, and recalls a likeable, "skinny, hollow-eyed" girl who was "very, very, very ambitious".

On one occasion, Minogue recalls, the paper had run a promotion offering bottles of supposedly aphrodisiac lager from a brewery in Strasbourg, which for some reason had been held up.

"So Rebekah volunteered to drive to Strasbourg, a 20-year-old in a clapped out Renault 5 or something, load up her car and drive back. At the time we thought that was quite a funny story, but in retrospect it's quite telling about what she was prepared to do to get on."

After the Post closed Brooks joined the News of the World's magazine, where she caught the eye of the then editor, Piers Morgan, who promoted her so rapidly that very little of her career, according to those who worked with her, was spent in on-the-ground journalism. At just 29 she was made deputy editor of the Sun, and it is a mark of her tremendous confidence, some would say overweening chutzpah, that she was disappointed to be passed over the following year for the editor's job in favour of David Yelland. In 2000 Murdoch gave her the consolation prize of editing the News of the World.

Her stint there saw the paper expose Angus Deayton and Prince Harry's drugtaking, and Sophie Rhys-Jones for trading on her royal connections. But she will chiefly be remembered for the "Sarah's law" campaign, in which the paper began naming and shaming sex offenders until forced to stop after it provoked attacks on innocent people.

In 2003 she finally got the job she had coveted as editor of the Sun. Her first act, frustrating the hopes of her Labour friends, marked clearly that her loyalty was first to the Sun's legacy and her employers: Page 3 ran as usual was to run Page 3, featuring a model called "Rebekah, 22, from Wapping".

She had some notable successes, earning praise for reinjecting wit after Yelland's drier tenure, and scored a sensational scoop securing an advance copy of the Hutton report into David Kelly's death. But some of the attempts at populist humour were tone deaf. A splash about the boxer Frank Bruno being sectioned ("Bonkers Bruno Locked Up") provoked outrage, as did "Ship Ship Hooray!" after Harold Shipman's suicide.

A bizarre episode in which she spent a night in the cells after being arrested for attacking Kemp was treated with good humour, however. The editor came straight to the office from the cells, said: "Much happening today?", and promptly splashed on the story.

Her employees recall a woman who was respected and feared more than she was liked. "There was a lot of shouting, a lot more stress, when Rebekah was editor," comments one Sun staffer. "I think many people were quite scared of her." Some News of the World staff have tartly denied reports that Brooks was in tears as she delivered the news of their sacking on Thursday.

In September 2009 Brooks was elevated to chief executive by Rupert Murdoch. And it is this relationship, however powerful and intimate her other friends, that is the key to her story.

Murdoch has four daughters but regards Brooks as another, say observers, and perhaps the closest of the lot. The pair had a habit of going for swims together, and he has hosted birthday parties for her. For her 40th it is said he bought her a Lowry. When she was arrested for attacking Kemp, he sent a designer suit to the police station so she would look her best when she left. One story has Murdoch, told that the Sun had been scooped by an impressive Mirror story, phoning the former NI chairman Les Hinton to ask: "Is she all right?"

That concern has certainly been evident this week. News International staff may increasingly want her to stand down, parliament, the leader of the opposition and even her friend the PM may consider her position untenable. But Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch believe Brooks's standard of ethics is "very good". And so, for the time being at least, she's going nowhere.

The case for Rebekah.
Posted by Tom Bradby. 8 July, 2011

Anyone who watched ‘News at Ten’ last night will know that I was asked in to New Corp’s headquarters yesterday afternoon to interview James Murdoch. I hope I asked the questions that most of you would have wished to put, chief among them how he could possibly be asking us to believe that Rebekah Brooks didn’t know that people on her payroll were hacking phones when she was Editor of the ‘News of the World’.

It seems incredible, doesn’t it? I and many others like me knew, or strongly suspected, that the practice was rife in some corners of Fleet Street, so how can it be possible that she, a woman born and bred in the News International stable, was apparently unaware of it?

I am genuinely intrigued by this. Whatever else you might think of them, James Murdoch, his family and advisers are not stupid. They know a full judicial inquiry is coming and that all of them – Rebekah included – will be called to give evidence in which they will have to tell the truth (unless they want to risk a really long prison sentence for perjury).

So what is the truth?

I sought out a long-term News International insider today, who did not, as it happens, have many positive things to say about his boss. He outlined the ‘Rebekah didn’t know’ case and it goes something like this; Rebekah did come up through the bowels of News International, but she was a Features girl. This was always her forte. News was a bit of a macho boys club and whilst she might have in general known that people in Fleet Street hacked phones, by the time she was Deputy Editor and then Editor of the paper she would not have wanted to delve into the dark arts of the newsdesk.

News Editors produced stories. Editors shaped them, debated them and worked out whether it all added up and would get past the lawyers.

It all sounded, in this description, a bit like the army; Sargeant Majors actually ran the real business of gathering the hard stuff, leaving officers to waft around glad-handing and making big decisions. A wise officer didn’t meddle in the work of the NCOs.

Editors, I was told, were by and large deliberately kept in the dark about some of what went on because it was accepted they might end up in front of a select committee on any given story and therefore needed to be able to plausibly deny any knowledge of how the information had been obtained.

The theory is that Rebekah might have suspected therefore that her NCOs and their subordinates were pushing a few ethical boundaries from time to time, but would probably have told herself it was being done in pursuit of the high and mighty, whom she would have viewed as hypocritical and corrupt and in need of exposure.

The final piece of the jigsaw in this argument is her move to ‘The Sun.’ The general sense I have got from those inside News International is that, whatever might have gone on more than a decade ago during the height of the Charles and Diana wars, they believe that the modern Sun has broadly been clean of phone hacking. So, the question goes, if Rebekah was an inveterate hacker during her time at the NOTW and understood what a great source of stories it could be, how come she didn’t bring this practice to ‘The Sun’ when she moved over to take the Editor’s chair? The fact that she didn’t would therefore tend to underline she never understood its importance to her previous operation.
At least, that is the argument.

I can only say that whenever I have brought in sensitive information in my twenty-one years at ITN and been sat in an Editor’s office as a result, he or she has wanted to know in pretty damned forensic detail not only exactly what was said, but by whom and when. The ‘I can’t tell you boss’ argument has never worked for a second.

But then, I have never worked in a tabloid. Maybe it is – or can be – different.

You may or may not choose to believe it, but this is the case for Rebekah in so much as I can establish it from within.