by Les Hinton
This group is permanent yet ever-changing. CEOs are fired, editors fail, politicians come and go, but the caravan keeps moving forward, leaving behind its casualties. Rupert’s summer party in London had been an annual magnet, but 2011 would be the last for years. Within three years, the marriage of Matthew Freud and Liz Murdoch had ended. The Murdoch light had faded in the social world of London, and no one knew if it would glow so brightly again.
But when we drove away from Burford in the early hours of Sunday 3 July — Rebekah and Charlie, Kath and me — we didn’t know that the ground was already moving beneath us and a force was heading our way that would change our lives forever.
The very next day — 4 July, Independence Day — I browsed the news sites at home in our London flat. The Guardian was leading with the story that News of the World reporters had hacked into the voicemail of a 13-year-old Surrey schoolgirl after she had disappeared in 2002 on her way home from school. Mushroom pickers discovered Milly Dowler’s body in woods six months later.
This was the latest in months of gathering allegations that phone-hacking had spread far beyond the actions of Clive Goodman and his accomplice, Glenn Mulcaire. Of all the accusations, it was by far the most serious; the story horrified me.
That night, Kath and I were having dinner with my old Fleet Street colleague, Chris Buckland, and our friend Kay Burley of Sky News. Buckland had worked on Fleet Street’s biggest newspapers, including the News of the World, and was shrewd about media and public taste. He had a relentlessly cheerful personality, but that night he was as gloomy as me.
‘This is very bad,’ he said. ‘The masses don’t care so much about the voicemails of royal flunkies, politicians, and celebrities — but the mobile of a murdered schoolgirl? If this is true, people will be really angry.’ Kay Burley, tuned as ever to the public mood, agreed. Until then, the story had animated mostly the tight and self-immersed world of media and politics. Media covers itself to an extent far exceeding any general interest, and the arcane twists and personality wars of politics fascinate politicians — and journalists — far more than everyone else. But everyone understands crime and tragedy and grief, and the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone would be the detonator for a much bigger explosion.
Kath and I flew back to New York the next morning, but by now I was seriously worried. What exactly had been going on at the News of the World all those years ago?
—
Eight days later.
The Range Rover turned so sharply into the narrow street that I was pushed hard against the leather-lined passenger door. We drove too quickly between Georgian terraces towards a modern building of flats; its sharp black-and-white geometry jarred amid the settled architecture.
When photographers waiting at its entrance saw our car they came towards us with their cameras raised. We took another swerve into the basement car park. Bodies thumped against us and lenses clattered on our windows. I had experienced the press pack hundreds of times, but this time I was the prey.
I stood alone in the small elevator taking me towards the penthouse that was Rupert Murdoch’s London home. I had been there many times but this was the early afternoon of 12 July 2011 and Rupert’s great creation was in the throes of a corporate nervous breakdown.
It had been eight days since The Guardian’s disclosures about Milly Dowler had turned phone-hacking into a national outrage stretching far beyond the tight circle of media and politics. Suddenly, the News of the World was to be closed, and rivals and politicians were describing Rupert’s company as a ‘mafia’.
Rupert had called me in New York the night before, highly agitated, saying he wanted me in London. ‘I want you here to walk around the News International building with James and me,’ he said. I thought this was a curious reason.
Kath and I took an overnight flight and I phoned his office from Heathrow Airport. ‘The boss says go home, get some sleep, and come into the office in the morning,’ I was told. Two hours later I got another call. There had been a change of plan. ‘He would like to see you now,’ I was told, and a car had been sent to collect me.
Inside the flat, I walked up the wide, luxurious staircase towards Rupert’s living room. He was slumped forward in a chair. His elbows rested on his knees and the fingers of his old hands were locked together. His head was drooped and still.
He looked up at me as I walked in and for a moment he didn’t speak. His heavy glasses had slipped down his nose; his jaw was slack and his mouth slightly open. The familiar intensity in his eyes had given way to an empty gaze.
‘This is the worst day of my life,’ he said. He looked so ill and tired my first impulse was to soothe him, to keep him calm.
As I had guessed, he did not want me to walk the building with him after all. I don’t know whether he changed his mind overnight, or whether he couldn’t bring himself to discuss the real reason on the phone, but he had decided to accept my resignation. When I had tried to offer it six days before, he refused. ‘No, I’m not pushing anyone under the bus,’ he had said. ‘I spoke to Tony Blair last night and he said that every time he pushed someone under the bus he regretted it.’
But something, or someone, had changed his mind. Rupert asked me to stay in my job until a replacement was found. He was so distraught, I knew he wasn’t thinking straight. I told him it made no sense for me to stay on and I refused. In all the difficulties I had seen him go through, I had never seen him so distressed; he seemed almost on the edge of panic. I never forgot his seeming calmness at the height of the debt crisis, when there cannot have been more at stake, standing silently before those anxious bankers while he calmly fastened the jacket of his double-breasted suit, addressing them without a quiver of nerves in his voice. But hacking had a deeper impact. Maybe it was tougher because he was older, maybe seeing his son James at the heart of the trouble made it more personal, or maybe, for the first time in his life, he simply didn’t know what to do.
The car was in the basement waiting to take me home.
‘Don’t drive so quickly through those photographers, Damian,’ I told the driver. ‘It’s not a good time to knock anyone down. There’s nothing wrong with a few pictures.’ The newspapers and television bulletins had plenty of shots of me being driven away looking dazed.
Kath and I flew back to New York, and pieced together the events of the last eight days. Four days after the Milly Dowler story broke, Rupert called me from a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, to tell me the News of the World was to be closed. I was speechless. Its style was loud and sometimes cruel, but it sold more than 2.5 million copies. What clear-thinking company would fire millions of customers? The News of the World had been published for 168 years. Hundreds of innocent people would lose their jobs because of the criminality and stupidity of a few. It was a desperate move. It was also foolish to imagine sacrificing the newspaper — and its staff — would quell the public outrage whipped up by politicians and Murdoch rivals. Better to ride the storm, lose sales and advertisers for a while, and then rebuild. It would not be long before Rupert admitted closing the paper was a mistake born of panic. He toyed later with the idea of resurrecting it, if not as a newspaper then as a website, but by then he could not generate much enthusiasm among his shell-shocked London team.
It was during the call from Sun Valley that I first attempted to offer my resignation. He refused, but two days after that conversation I began getting the strong sense that either Rupert wasn’t so sure that I should stay, or others in the company disagreed with him. A Reuters story appeared online with the heading: ‘Could Murdoch deputy Hinton take the fall?’
This was the first article I had seen suggesting I should be fired. The rival media pressure had reached a pitch of merciless glee, but it had been concentrated mainly on London and on James Murdoch, in charge of News International since I left in December 2007, and on Rebekah Brooks, by now chief executive of the company.
The s
ame day, I received an email from Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the London-based media editor of the Financial Times. Under the subject line ‘Can we talk?’ it said:
Les,
People are briefing that you’ll be ‘sacrificed’, and I’ll probably have to write something sooner rather than later (probably tomorrow morning for Monday’s paper) … If there’s any way to hear your side of the story, I would very much like to.
Andrew
This shocked me. I had clear views on how well — or how badly — the crisis was being handled in London, but I had spoken to no one about that or about phone-hacking, and I wasn’t going to start now. I replied:
Andrew,
Thanks for getting in touch but I am not going to be saying anything.
Best
Les
Edgecliffe-Johnson came back with a second email:
Sorry to hear it, but I understand.
Again, for the avoidance of any doubt, we are currently planning a front page story saying pressure is growing within News for you and others involved in the 2007 initial inquiry to take the blame.
Best wishes,
Andrew
It was now clear that the ‘briefing’ was coming directly from News Corp. All large organisations have their own versions of what politicians call ‘spin doctors’: PRs and media spokespeople. Occasionally, these people go too far, but it’s most likely they are acting according to the wishes or direct instructions of their bosses.
The following day, as Kath and I were on a bus returning from a family weekend in Long Island, I received a text message from The Guardian. Someone — no names were given — had told them I had seen an internal company report providing evidence of widespread phone-hacking at the News of the World. I had no idea what they were talking about — unsurprising, as it became clear that no such report existed. I didn’t respond, but I was beginning to feel beleaguered. My messages to executives in London to find out what was going on went unanswered.
The next day, one theme dominated the front pages of The Guardian and the Financial Times. ‘Murdoch’s top aide faces new questions on hacking scandal’ said The Guardian; and in the FT, ‘Focus on Dow Jones chief Hinton as Murdoch takes charge of hacking crisis’.
According to The Guardian: ‘Les Hinton, Rupert Murdoch’s lifelong lieutenant and closest advisor, faces questions over whether he saw a 2007 internal News International report, which found evidence that phone-hacking was more widespread than admitted by the company …’ This ‘report’, it said, comprised a collection of emails that had been discovered and sent to the police by executives who ‘recently’ joined News International. ‘The Guardian understands that Hinton was among five NI executives who had access to the report.’
The Financial Times story ran along similar lines. ‘Les Hinton, chief executive of Dow Jones, is being blamed by people close to News Corp, for failing to get to grips with the News of the World phone-hacking scandal when he was in charge of Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper group. Mr Hinton, a loyal Murdoch employee for 52 years … could become the most senior casualty of the crisis, his friends fear, deflecting blame from James Murdoch, who runs News Corp’s European operations, and Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, which publishes Mr Murdoch’s UK papers. “Les will be sacrificed to save James and Rebekah,” one person familiar with the company said. “It happened on Les’s watch,” another added: “James was not even a director of News Corp at the time.”’
There was no mistaking that senior people inside the company were going to a lot of trouble to stitch me up.
I had, of course, been running News International when phone-hacking took place at the News of the World. I was not responsible for, nor had I known about, the secret pay-offs to victims the company had later made, and I wasn’t responsible for the management of affairs as they flew out of control. But hacking had happened — in the time-honoured, quitting-letter phrase — ‘on my watch’.
I had already offered Rupert my resignation, which he had refused. So why the unattributed attacks and press briefings? It looked like others were forcing the spotlight on to me, and pressing their point with Rupert, to protect themselves. It was beginning to feel like a fight on an overloaded lifeboat.
When I challenged Rupert, he blamed ‘out-of-control public relations people’. At no stage did I believe he was behind it. Management by leaking is a tacky and cowardly technique, and never his style. When Rupert wanted to fire people, he sat them down and did it.
No one at News International had asked me about the damning ‘internal report’ that I was supposed to have seen, nor was it ever produced in evidence to a select committee, or by the prosecution in the long-drawn out court cases that followed. It didn’t exist. The closest thing to a ‘report’ turned out to be a collection of previously unseen emails discovered on file at the firm of lawyers, Harbottle & Lewis, employed in 2007 by me and other executives to explore allegations of phone-hacking. Years later, the full story of these missing ‘toxic emails’, and how they were overlooked by the lawyer charged with examining them, would be revealed.
The newspaper coverage of me during this uproar was not entirely unkind. Conrad Black wrote a comment piece in the Financial Times headlined: ‘Murdoch, like Napoleon, is a great bad man’. In it, he said: ‘It is unlikely that Mr Murdoch, his son James or Les Hinton committed crimes (Mr Hinton is a very decent man).’
The power of Black’s testimonial was somewhat diminished by the fact he wrote it from a prison cell. He was serving three years for mail and wire fraud and obstructing justice, crimes committed while he was running a newspaper empire.
Back in New York, after initially wanting me to stay until a successor was found, Rupert was suddenly impatient for me to announce my resignation. Perhaps there was a view from some within the company that my going would take the pressure off; that it would draw a line under events. If so, it was a vain hope. It wasn’t me who was in the gun sights of politicians and rival media groups, and my scalp was incidental. They were after other prey, as the coming weeks and months would show.
I told Rupert I needed more time to talk to my family and to reach agreement on a separation settlement. At the same time, I prepared my resignation letter, with the help of Kath and two sympathetic senior executives, Robert Thomson and Mark Jackson, the Dow Jones general counsel.
My letter said: ‘That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant and in the circumstances I feel it is proper for me to resign …’ I added that there had ‘never been any evidence delivered to me that suggested the conduct spread beyond one journalist’. But I ended with a personal note to Rupert: ‘I want to express my gratitude to you for a wonderful working life. My admiration and respect for you are unbounded. You have built a magnificent business since I first joined 52 years ago and it has been an honour making my contribution.’
Rupert published his statement: ‘Les and I have been on a remarkable journey together for more than 52 years. That this passage has come to an unexpected end, professionally, not personally, is a matter of much sadness to me … his great contribution to News Corporation over more than five decades has enhanced innumerable lives, whether those of employees hired by him or of readers better informed because of him.’
By Friday evening — 15 July 2011 — it was time to leave the office for the last time. Mark Jackson, who was a close friend as well as a good colleague, arranged for my emails to be sealed and my office files locked away. ‘You will thank me for this, I promise,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to eliminate any possibility you could be accused of tampering with documents or deleting emails.’
Jackson also recommended an attorney — it was an unpleasant surprise to realise I needed one. Chip Loewenson of New York law firm Morrison & Foerster became a friend, and his team, including the London-based Kevin Roberts, would guide me faultlessly through the storms that followed.
A few colleagues had gathered in the News Corp executive dining suite, where the staff kindly opened bottles of seriously good champagne. Robert Thomson asked me to visit his office. As I left his newsroom, there was a burst of applause.
It was a Friday, and that night we drove to our house in Bridgehampton, Long Island. Robert Thomson, his wife Ping, and their two sons, Luke and Jack, joined us for the weekend. Rupert called my mobile a couple of times. I know he was worried about me, but I felt overdosed with sympathy. I think I was more wounded than I realised and wanted to push him away. He sent me an email:
Les, I can’t wait to see you to tell you of my feelings. Your letter is generous as well as dignified and speaks volumes about your loyalty and integrity. Excuse not writing more, but I’m more than exhausted at the moment. Love to Kath.
It was a bright, wide-skied weekend, and we did our best to put it all aside. The unknowing innocence of the children made it easier — Ping and Robert’s energetic two sons and my grandchildren, Samantha and Dylan, who had arrived with Martin and his wife, Stephanie.
The house was on the edge of a lake, and our telescope was fixed on an osprey across the water, feasting on a fish we had watched it catch. Deer were grazing on the far bank. Thomson had taken a phone call and walked back out to the deck where we sat with our drinks. ‘It was Rupert,’ he said. ‘Rebekah has been arrested.’
No one spoke. We looked at each other, and we looked at him. Robert gave a sad-eyed smile: ‘It’s amazing that Rebekah gets arrested and we just sit here in silence,’ he said. We were all in a state of shock saturation.
Later that Sunday, we heard that Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan commissioner and Britain’s most senior law officer, had quit over the police handling of phone-hacking. The next day, John Yates, the assistant commissioner and nationwide counter-terrorism chief, also resigned. After defending the original police investigation, he was later forced to admit it had been, ‘a cock-up’.