HUMILIATION OF CAMERON
Questions over PM’s judgment as spin doctor he took to No.10 faces jail for phone hacking while Rebekah Brooks is freed
DAVID Cameron was forced into a humiliating apology yesterday after his former spin doctor Andy Coulson was found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones. In an extraordinary day, which saw former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks cleared of all charges after an eightmonth trial, Mr Cameron was accused of bringing ‘a criminal into the heart of Downing Street’.
The Prime Minister delivered a ‘full and frank apology’ for hiring Coulson as his director of communications in 2007, just months after he had resigned as editor of the News of the World over an earlier hacking scandal. Mr Cameron employed Coulson against clear advice from senior figures in politics and the media that the appointment could end in disaster. Mrs Brooks’s acquittal also calls into question Mr Cameron’s decision to order the £5.4 million Leveson Inquiry into Press standards, based on an erroneous Guardian report which claimed the News of the World, which she edited, hacked the phone of murder victim Milly Dowler.
‘I’m extremely sorry that I employed him. It was the wrong decision and I am very clear about that,’ the Prime Minister said yesterday.
‘Knowing what I now know, it was obviously wrong to employ him. I gave
someone a second chance and it turned out to be a bad decision.’ Mr Cameron said he had sought undertakings from Coulson that he had not known about hacking before he was appointed.
He said: ‘i asked him questions about if he knew about phone hacking and he said that he didn’t and i accepted those assurances and i gave him the job.’
last night, as Coulson and five other News of the World employees faced up to two years in jail, fresh questions emerged about why Coulson was not fully vetted before entering Downing Street.
Coulson’s former lover Mrs Brooks, 46, appeared close to tears as she left court after hearing the jury acquit her of conspiring to hack phones, corrupt public officials and pervert the course of justice.
She walked free with her husband, racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, who was also found not guilty of perverting the course of justice. An angry Mr Brooks accused police of treating the couple ‘like terrorists’ when their home was raided at dawn in 2012.
it was claimed last night that Scotland Yard detectives now want to interview rupert Murdoch over what he knew about phone hacking. He is likely to face questioning under caution in Britain in the coming months, and his son James could also be quizzed, the Guardian reported.
The Old Bailey trial also exposed as untrue the alllegation in the Guardian newspaper that News of the World employees had cynically deleted messages from Milly Dowler’s phone – giving her parents ‘false hope’ that she was alive.
The messages were in fact deleted automatically by the phone company, but the inaccurate report prompted Mr Cameron to order the leveson inquiry and Scotland Yard’s investigation into hacking was escalated. Within minutes of the guilty verdict against Coulson, questions were raised in the House of Commons, and Chancellor George Osborne – who held meetings with Coulson before his appointment – was accused of bringing the Government into disrepute.
Coulson was found guilty of a single charge of conspiracy to hack phones. The eight women and three men of the jury are still considering two charges of conspiracy to make corrupt payments to police against him and the newspaper’s former royal editor, Clive Goodman.
Trial judge Mr Justice Saunders called on
‘He stared straight ahead, expressionless’
politicians to show restraint and delay comments on the high-profile case until the jury had returned all its verdicts. He said: ‘i have been made aware of the commenting which has gone on since the verdicts were announced and i urge restraint because the jury is still considering verdicts.’
The prosecution had alleged that Mrs Brooks and Coulson had presided over a six-year campaign of ‘industrial’ hacking at the News of the World. Targets ranged from Princes William and Harry to Cabinet min-
‘ I take full responsibility for employing Andy Coulson. I did so on the basis of undertakings I was given by him about phone hacking and yesterday those turned out not to be the case. . . I am extremely sorry. It was the wrong decision.' David Cameron
isters and celebrities, but it was the revelation of the Milly Dowler hacking which fuelled public anger over the case.
The hacking was carried out under Mrs Brooks’ editorship, from 2000 to 2003, but she insisted she was never aware of it and never sanctioned it.
Unlike Coulson, who admitted he was played hacked voicemails from former Home Secretary David Blunkett, she denied all knowledge of the illegal hacking.
Under Mrs Brooks’s editorship, the newspaper’s hacker-in- chief, private detective Glenn Mulcaire, was paid almost £300,000 on a weekly retainer and the payments continued for another three years under Coulson’s editorship. The jury heard there was little evidence of Mulcaire doing anything for the tabloid other than hacking phones and blagging information.
When police raided his home and office in 2006, they seized almost 8,000 pages of notes relating to thousands of potential victims, and the News of the World’ s publisher News international has settled civil claims from hundreds of victims. But the jury accepted Mrs Brooks’s evidence that she had not known of the hacking, and that she had not known journalists at the Sun were allegedly making payments to public officials while she was editor there, from 2003 to 2007.
They also acquitted Mrs Brooks, her husband, her former PA Cheryl Carter and News international’s head of security Mark Hanna of an attempted cover-up in which they were alleged to have hidden evidence from the police while she was News international chief executive.
Their departure from court left Coulson alone in the dock to wait for the jury’s remaining verdicts. Goodman was excused from attending court yesterday.
As he was convicted of the phone hacking conspiracy, Coulson stared straight ahead expressionless, although he later sat in the dock with his head in his hands.
A series of emails between Coulson and
‘It will be a big story goldmine for us’
Goodman were read to the jury, including a 2006 email which the prosecution alleged related to a plot to hack the royal family.
Goodman wrote: ‘ A few weeks ago you asked me to find new ways of getting into the [royal] family, especially William and Harry and i came up with this.
‘it’s safe, productive and cost effective and i’m confident it will become a big story goldmine for us.’
Coulson and Goodman, 56, deny the remaining charges against them.
The trial continues.