The Bootle Boy

by Les Hinton

  After the allegations of payments to police in Britain, the FBI and the US Justice Department began an investigation under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This was drastic action, probably incited by Rupert’s American enemies, and criticised even in The New York Times. Bill Keller, soon after leaving as the newspaper’s most senior editor, wrote: ‘That seems an ominously expansive use of a statute that was created to eliminate bribery as a means to obtain business or favorable regulations from foreign governments.’

  All this pressure drove the Metropolitan Police and News International into a desperate cycle of over-compensation. Afraid of further charges of a cover-up, News gave the police access to information that contained even the smallest hint of a misstep. And the Met — fighting accusations of a corrupt closeness to the company it was investigating — felt obligated to pursue every News International lead. If the company had provided evidence of a reporter double-parking on an assignment, I think the police would have staged a dawn raid.

  There were plenty of dawn raids.

  At first, these searches were directed at News of the World journalists suspected of phone-hacking. But on the morning of Saturday 28 January 2012, there was an alarming escalation in the investigation. Four of The Sun’s most senior journalists were arrested. Teams of officers searched their homes, detained them for questioning, then bailed them on suspicion of making illegal payments to police officers.

  The Sunday Telegraph’s account was typical of next morning’s newspapers: ‘Senior executives at The Sun newspaper who were closely associated with Rebekah Brooks … have been arrested on suspicion of making illegal payments to police officers. They were detained in a series of dawn raids after information was handed to Scotland Yard by News Corporation, the tabloid’s parent company. Sources within Rupert Murdoch’s publishing group described the process as “draining the swamp”.’

  Draining the swamp? I was furious. I had worked with these people for years. Fergus Shanahan, who had been Brooks’ deputy on The Sun, was a friend; Graham Dudman, the paper’s managing editor, was a quiet, affable man; Chris Pharo was a demanding and effective news editor; and Mike Sullivan was one of Fleet Street’s most respected crime reporters.

  Sixteen days later there were other dawn raids. Five more senior journalists from The Sun were arrested: Geoff Webster, the deputy editor; John Sturgis, deputy news editor; Nick Parker, chief foreign correspondent; John Kay, chief reporter; and John Edwards, the picture editor. Kay was one of Fleet Street’s most garlanded journalists and a friend since we were reporters in the 1970s. Edwards I had known since he was a child; he was the son of The Sun’s famed royal photographer, Arthur Edwards. These newspapermen were at the heart of making The Sun Britain’s biggest-selling and most influential newspaper. Their arrests were based on information provided by News International, their employer. I had no idea what they were alleged to have done, but I felt a bitter anger towards the callous fool who branded them swamp dwellers — as if their arrests were part of a plan by lawyers, PRs, and others to sanitise the newspaper and company for which they had worked so long and so hard.

  More arrests followed, week after week, and stories spread of the early-morning ordeals of journalists’ families; crying teenagers, woken at 5am, whose rooms and possessions were searched; silent children watching as a parent was taken away. We heard stories of the mental pressures — the anti-anxiety medication, the breakdowns, heavy drinking, and two suicide attempts. Careers and normal lives would be suspended while journalists waited for months and years to learn whether or not they would be charged.

  The entire upper echelon of The Sun was gutted. Morale was crushed; it was a miracle the newspaper was coming out at all. The anger spilled beyond the boundaries of The Sun. Trevor Kavanagh, The Sun’s associate editor and political columnist, went public in an angry column attacking politicians and the police for treating journalists ‘like members of an organised crime gang’. He took an unveiled shot at his own management, writing: ‘The Sun is not a “swamp” that needs to be drained.’ He went on BBC radio to attack ‘certain parts of the company — not News International I hasten to add, not the newspaper side of the operation — (that are) actually boasting that they are sending information to police that has put people … into police cells.’ Kavanagh became The Sun’s public champion at a time when almost no one in the company was brave enough to do so. Fortunately for him, Rupert might have secretly approved of what he did. Rupert thought highly of Trevor and he remained a regular guest at his dinners and private parties.

  Among some at the top of News Corp, there was shock and remorse, as if a government had seen its air force bomb the wrong target. In March 2013, disregarding the advice of lawyers, Rupert met The Sun journalists who had been arrested. He told them the company was being ‘picked on’. He pointed the finger at ‘the old right-wing establishment … or worse, the left-wing get-even crowd of Gordon Brown’. He criticised the ‘incompetent’ police investigation and promised: ‘I will do everything in my power to give you total support, even if you’re convicted and get six months or whatever …’ His words were secretly recorded — not everyone present felt warmly towards him by this stage — and were leaked around the world, bringing accusations from his ever-hopeful enemies that he was aiding and abetting criminal activity.

  In the summer of 2011, at the height of the hacking outcry, David Cameron had ordered a public inquiry into the practices of Britain’s newspapers. The inquiry was to be led by Sir Brian Leveson, a 62-year-old judge from Liverpool.

  Although the inquiry lasted 16 months, and cost taxpayers more than £5 million, it was not long enough for Leveson to grasp how modern media was changing. His pronouncements and judgment on the internet astounded the industry. While digital was demolishing the business models of old print, Leveson blindly ruled it did not deserve his attention: ‘People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance or accuracy,’ he said.

  Other findings were tough, but not without some merit. ‘There have been too many times when, chasing the story, parts of the press have acted as if its own code, which it wrote, simply did not exist.’ And politicians, he said, had become close to the press, ‘in a way which has not been in the public interest’.

  After 20 years in America, I was fascinated by the British impulse to control newspapers. In the US it is never an issue, given the First Amendment guarantees of free speech. British newspapers must obey the nation’s laws like every other institution: phone-hacking is a crime and journalists accused of it should rightly go to trial and face imprisonment; libel laws are more stringent than America’s and newspapers have navigated them for years; like every business, media is subject to anti-monopoly rules protecting new entrants, and regulators have powers to assure a plurality of opinion.

  But among many in Britain there has long been an appetite for special powers to constrain the British press. It’s a truism that free media is a vital ventilator that every healthy society needs. It’s also true that this freedom comes with occasions of excess, error, vulgarity, vindictiveness, prejudice, and every other epithet aimed at Britain’s wild and free newspaper industry. The belief that a centralised body of arbiters blessed by the state can guarantee the good behaviour of the British press, as well as being insane and sinister, ignores the true threat to a healthy information environment that comes from the developing technologies driving modern communications. The digital age has made market entry more affordable and opinion more abundant, yet at the same time British homes and workplaces are being flooded with lies, libels, violence, and pornography from sources far beyond our borders, where no courts or law enforcement can reach. But, while the internet runs amok, Britain must listen to the anachronistic ranting of politicians fighting old wars, and tolerate the sublimely ignorant deliberations of judges such as Brian Leveson.

  But Leveson went ahead with his little ideas and
proposed a new watchdog for newspapers operating with ‘state underpinning’. He recommended that newspapers refusing to accept the authority of this state-approved regulator be subject to punitive costs in court cases. The industry’s reaction was unsurprising. Editors protested that they were being blackmailed into compliance and overwhelmingly rejected the Leveson plan.

  These dramas were the backdrop to my own continuing encounters with the Metropolitan Police, News Corp lawyers, the US Justice Department, and a committee of politicians dominated by Gordon Brown’s personal axe man, Tom Watson.

  In a conference room on Third Avenue, New York, five lawyers representing News Corp confronted me. Over three hours they questioned me, producing long-ago expense accounts they considered suspicious, even though they showed only the occasional lunch or dinner with Brooks, Coulson, and Colin Myler. They presented me with old letters and emails; none was in the least incriminating, and I already knew, thanks to the warnings of friendly company insiders, that many of them had been sent to the police and Parliament.

  I spent a day at an innocuous looking house in south London, being interviewed ‘under caution’, as the Metropolitan Police considered whether the company should face charges of corporate liability. After I refused to meet at a central police station — I was wise enough by this stage to know my attendance would be leaked to The Guardian — the police suggested an anonymous building usually reserved to examine and interview young victims of sexual abuse. A doctor’s examination suite was next to the room where I was questioned. It was a haunting place, made worse by the coloured cushions and other attempts at cheerfulness. Three police officers were present, as well as someone in another room who aimed a video camera at me. I arrived from New York with Chip Loewenson and another Manhattan attorney from Morrison Foerster; in London, another of the firm’s attorneys, Kevin Roberts, joined us. A police sergeant asked most of the questions. Her boss, an inspector, occasionally interrupted using a more aggressive tone. I think they were employing a good-cop bad-cop routine. If there were a theme to the questions, it was an effort to have me express criticism of the conduct of others. They were also seeking to understand the complex structure of Rupert’s UK companies. I made several attempts to help them, but was not convinced I succeeded. This ordeal stretched over nine hours. The sergeant was a committed smoker, mercifully increasing the frequency of breaks.

  After the interview, I took Chip and his team to my favourite local pub in Marylebone. Kath, who had spent the day at home worrying, was pleased to drink a few beers with us. She was less pleased that one lawyer was sympathetically bringing me a large whisky with each pint. The next day, I slept in for hours.

  Later, in downtown Manhattan, I spent three hours at the Justice Department facing a fierce battery of four government attorneys and five FBI agents. They were deciding whether to recommend corporate charges in the United States. By this time, I felt almost calm in the face of the same questions and fabricated fierceness. I had already faced my most persistent tormentors in the members of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee. The Culture committee summoned me on three occasions to answer questions about phone-hacking. I had appeared before parliamentary committees previously and found MPs, with few exceptions, friendly but lamentably ill informed. These experiences made me far too relaxed.

  My first appearance to discuss phone-hacking was in March 2007, soon after Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire had been sentenced. It was uneventful, except for my answer to one question. The chairman, the Conservative MP John Whittingdale, asked: ‘You carried out a full, rigorous internal inquiry and you are absolutely convinced that Clive Goodman was the only person who knew what was going on?’

  I answered honestly: ‘Yes, we have, and I believe he was the only person, but that investigation, under the new editor, continues.’

  My response would haunt me years later when the committee persuaded themselves it constituted a lie.

  My next session was in September 2009, three months after The Guardian story that News International had secretly paid off hacking victims. This was not a friendly meeting; the committee members were irritable and suspicious. I soon realised I had made a mistake agreeing to appear. I had left Britain two years earlier and no current senior News International executive testified — neither Rebekah Brooks, then chief executive, nor James Murdoch, who had personally authorised the payment of £700,000 to Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers’ Association.

  Kath, familiar with the ways of Labour politicians in particular, kept telling me not to testify — especially as Brooks and Murdoch weren’t going to — but I didn’t think there was any reason to worry. It was foolish of me. I didn’t even take legal advice.

  It was a nasty and bad-tempered session. I had no idea what questions the committee would ask, and knew few of the answers. Many centred on events that took place after I had moved to New York; the rest dated back to 2006 and 2007, and I either didn’t know the answers, or couldn’t remember.

  The committee regarded my every lapse of memory and moment of ignorance as deliberate deceit. I was drained at the end — and furious with myself for agreeing to do it.

  When the committee reported early in 2010, it accused me and other witnesses, mostly News of the World staff, of ‘collective amnesia’: ‘Evidence we have seen makes it inconceivable that no one else at the News of the World, bar Clive Goodman, knew about the phone-hacking.’

  By the time of my final appearance, the hacking drama was a super-storm. It was October 2011, three months after my resignation from Dow Jones. Rebekah Brooks had been arrested; James Murdoch was poised to quit and leave London for good; the News of the World no longer existed; and News Corp had been forced to abandon its bid to acquire the 61 per cent of British Sky Broadcasting it did not own. It was a bitter setback; Rupert’s high-risk creation of Sky 20 years before almost cost him the company, and News Corp’s total ownership was a long-held wish.

  This time, I spent hours preparing under the legal tuition of my lawyer, Chip Loewenson and his team at Morrison Foerster. I knew that members of the committee were intent on finding me guilty of lying to them previously, and of being in contempt of Parliament — an offence some MPs wrongly believed could lead to a prison sentence. I appeared by video link from a hotel meeting room on Fifth Avenue, New York, hoarse with stress, but furious at the purpose of their summons.

  MPs at select committee hearings are protected against libel charges by parliamentary privilege. This means they can basically say anything they want. They might not be conscientious in preparing for meetings, but they can harangue and insult witnesses without fear of repercussion.

  I batted back all their predictable accusations and insults. The Guardian coverage, which had not always been flattering, said: ‘Geoffrey Boycott would have been proud.’ This comment might, or might not, have been meant as a compliment, but it pleased me. I thwarted Tom Watson in his efforts to pressure me into pointing a blaming finger at the Murdochs; and I even helped out one confused Labour MP, the former corporate financier Paul Farrelly, when he misunderstood a piece of evidence.

  As the session ended, a still-open microphone picked up the committee clerk’s view: ‘He seems quite credible,’ she said. Whittingdale appeared to agree: ‘Interesting, but no bombshell there.’ Informally, I was led to expect a rap on the knuckles, and wasn’t sure why I deserved even that.

  I knew I had dealt persuasively with every effort to prove I was untruthful, but I also knew Whittingdale carried little weight with Labour members. He was a decent enough man, but a docile politician, and no match for Watson’s bruising style. I particularly distrusted Watson. He had built a recent reputation through his attacks on Rupert and News International, and I knew he wouldn’t want the select committee report to be a damp squib. Before the committee even delivered its report, Watson published a book — titled, dispassionately, Dial M for Murdoch — saying I was guilty
of misleading Parliament. I knew then it was a stitch-up.

  On 1 May 2012, as I expected, the report accused me, and others, of lying in our testimony, and therefore of being in contempt of Parliament. I found out the day before the report’s release on The Guardian website — some members of the committee had been leaking to The Guardian for months.

  The report was debated for two hours in the House of Commons. Labour MPs, including Chris Bryant, called dramatically for prison sentences, while others more moderately demanded public admonishment in front of the entire House of Commons.

  I knew Bryant was either ignorant of parliamentary rules, or guilty of wishful thinking, and that Parliament had no power to imprison citizens, but I was still enraged at being publicly attacked without any opportunity to defend myself. I was determined to fight the committee’s ‘verdict’ and had already sent a detailed protest to both Whittingdale and the speaker of the house, John Bercow.

  Select committee reports are typically nodded through Parliament; the House accepts their findings and the world moves on. My objections — and the accusations by my lawyers that the Culture committee was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights — stopped the report in its tracks. Instead, Parliament referred it ‘for review’ to the Committee of Privileges, the House of Commons ethics watchdog.

  For four years, Kath and I, working closely with my lawyers, argued with the Privileges committee. Thousands of words, some bad tempered, were exchanged as the committee repeatedly delayed its work, citing the risk of prejudicing ongoing investigations and court cases. These excuses may have been valid, but we were also sure that the committee would prefer the whole thing to just go away. Its members were MPs, too, with the usual allegiances and enmities: there was no doubt that its members did not enjoy challenging the findings of their colleagues.