[ 2011-11-15 ]

The activities of Glenn Mulcaire, the investigator, will be examined by the inquiry

Hacking: 28 journalists on list
At least 28 News International employees are named
in notes seized by police from a private
investigator employed by the News of the World to
hack phones, the public inquiry into press
standards was told on its opening day.

More journalists and executives are possibly
implicated in the scandal than previously thought.
Police have arrested 14 people who worked for the
NoW, from reporters to editors.

Robert Jay, QC, counsel to the inquiry, said the
investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, may also have
intercepted voicemails on behalf of The Sun and
the Mirror.

Mulcaire wrote the words “The Sun” in the
corner of a page of one of the notebooks he used
to record details of messages left for people he
was hired to investigate. The inquiry was told
that this was part of the evidence in a case being
brought against The Sun by the actor Jude Law.

Mulcaire has admitted hacking the phones of Max
Clifford, the publicist, Gordon Taylor, the
chairman of the Professional Footballers
Association, Sky Andrew, the football agent, Simon
Hughes MP and Elle Macpherson, the supermodel.

Mr Jay said that there might be a name “relating
to the Mirror” on another page. He suggested
that this meant the inquiry needed to consider the
“culture, depth and breadth” of the use of
illegal methods by newspapers rather than
wrongdoing only at the NoW, which was closed in
July because of outrage at the revelation that it
had hacked the phone of the murdered teenager
Milly Dowler. Her father, Bob Dowler, was in the
public gallery as the inquiry ordered in response
to the scandal began at the Royal Courts of
Justice in London.

Of the 28 names in Mulcaire’s notes, Mr Jay
said: “We only have the first name in each of
the cases, but they happen to tie up with the
first names of employees of News International.”
He said the number of names “suggests
wide-ranging illegal activity within the
organisation at the relevant time”.

Only one of these people, Clive Goodman, the
NoW’s former royal editor, has been prosecuted
for phone hacking. He was jailed along with
Mulcaire in 2007.

Mr Jay said there were four “prolific users”
of Mulcaire’s services. He referred to them as
A, B, C and D to avoid prejudicing criminal
investigations.

He said A appeared 1,453 times, B 303, C 252 and D
135. These four people accounted for 2,143 out of
the 2,266 investigations by Mulcaire. Some targets
were subject to several investigations.

Mulcaire’s 11,000 pages of notes named 5,795
possible victims. Police seized 690 audio
recordings and found evidence of 586 voicemail
messages. They have identified 64 intended
recipients of those messages.

He said it “must have been obvious to News
International at all material times” that
Goodman was not the only reporter involved,
because Mulcaire had admitted at his trial to
hacking the phones of five prominent people who
would not have been of interest to a royal
editor.

He said: “Either senior management knew what was
going on at the time, and therefore at the very
least condoned this illegal activity, or they did
not and NI’s systems failed to the extent that
there was at the very least a failure of
supervision and oversight, with possible failures
of training, corporate ethos, and checking of
expenses claims.

“There is, I suppose, room for the Nelsonian
blind eye within this framework. On either version
we have clear evidence of a generic, systemic or
cultural problem.”

Mr Jay said the inquiry would not be limited to
phone hacking but would investigate all
“unlawful and unethical” news-gathering
methods, including subterfuge and blagging.

Lord Justice Leveson, the inquiry’s chairman,
warned editors not to single out for negative
coverage any witness who testified to intrusion by
journalists, adding that the inquiry team would
monitor the press.

He also said that the freedom of the press was
“fundamental” to Britain’s democracy and way
of life and that there was a “great deal to
applaud” in Britain’s press. He said the task
of his investigation could be summed up in one
simple question: “Who guards the guardians?”

Source - The Times(UK)

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