Murdoch's World (27 page)

In July 2009, at the time the
Guardian
newspaper exposed News International's secret payment to Gordon Taylor and revealed the existence of hundreds of other potential instances of illegal voice mail hacking, Yates had little appetite for pursuing leads.
After a review of the past inquiry that lasted not days but hours, Yates announced no further investigation was needed.

At the time,
Andy Hayman chimed in with supportive columns that ran in the
Times of London
and the
News of the World
. “We put our best detectives on the case and left no stone unturned as officials breathed down our neck,” Hayman wrote.

“As I recall the list of those targeted, which was put together from records kept by [the paper's private eye, Glenn] Mulcaire, ran to several hundred names. Of these, there was a small number—perhaps a handful—where there was evidence they had actually been tampered with,” Hayman wrote. “Had there been evidence of tampering in the other cases, that would have been investigated, as would the slightest hint that others were involved.” And then, in a coup de grâce, Hayman wrote, “Yet, as is so often the case, in the storm of allegation and denial the facts get lost. Well-known figures such as John Prescott are said to have been victims of the hacking without any clear evidence that their phones were in fact hacked into.”

Lord Prescott's two-year affair with a secretary while serving as deputy prime minister had been disclosed by the tabloid and had badly damaged his public standing.
Prescott had been repeatedly told by police he was not a target of phone hacking by
News of the World
. In January 2012, years after Hayman's column and months after the Dowler revelations, News International admitted it had in fact intercepted private messages and paid him £40,000 (about $66,000) in damages. Only then did the police apologize.

In New York, News Corp executives monitored the developments lightly and with relief. The declarations by police were good enough
for them. The board did not formally review the matter—it was a local nuisance that could be handled in Britain.

Yates clung to the justification that a crime would have required proof that the person whose voice mail had been hacked had not listened to the violated message first. The Crown Prosecution Service later explicitly rejected that interpretation of the law.

Like Hayman, Yates of the Yard (as he was inevitably dubbed in coverage)
repeatedly dined with editors of
News of the World
and executives from News International. In November 2009, he met with the tabloid's crime editor and the paper's new editor in chief, Colin Myler, at the Ivy, a restaurant known for its famous clientele and pricey fare. The Ivy charged about $125 per person, and $220 for a nice bottle of Bordeaux. Everything proper about it, Yates insisted in the moment: all such contacts were promptly disclosed online, per police guidelines.

Yates later admitted having at least ten meals with Neil Wallis between April 2009 and August 2010 that had not been disclosed publicly. Wallis was a public relations official who had just stepped down as the number two editor at
News of the World
. Those meals took place at restaurants that were among the most exclusive in the city. They also attended professional soccer games together, by Wallis's account. And none of those contacts was publicly disclosed.

In October 2010, a suspicious package was singled out at the UPS hangar at East Midlands Airport in England. The box contained a toner cartridge with wires sticking out. Initial testing detected the presence of explosive material. The package was sent from Yemen with a label designating a Chicago synagogue as its destination. President Obama and UK home secretary Teresa May issued statements registering their concern and dismay.

The
News of the World
felt it had an inside line to an international story with scary implications. An editor on the news desk emailed Lucy Panton, the crime editor. “John Yates could be crucial here. Have you spoken to him?” The news desk editor wrote he wanted a
splashy headline for the front page: “so time to call in all those bottles of champagne.”

Wallis's daughter also had a job on the force—a job that she got thanks to a plug from Yates. On January 29, 2009, Yates wrote to the head of Scotland Yard's human resources office:
“Bit of advice, plse—the attached CV belongs to the daughter of Neil Wallis, the Dep[uty] Editor of the
News of the World
. You probably know that Neil has been a great friend (and occasional critic) of the Met in past years and has been a close advisor to Paul [Stephenson] on stuff/tactics in respect of the new Commissionership.”

Stephenson had been elevated to police commissioner the day before. By October 2009, Wallis had left the paper and was on a £2,000 (about $3,200) monthly contract to the force, answering to PR chief Dick Fedorcio and Yates, newly head of antiterrorism efforts. The Wallis appointment was not formally vetted. Instead, Yates simply wrote Fedorcio: “Is there anything in the matters that [the
Guardian
's] Nick Davies is still chasing and reporting on, that could at any stage embarrass you, Mr Wallis, me, the Commissioner or the Metropolitan police?” Yates said he received “categorical assurances” there was not.

At moments the membrane separating the two institutions seemed so porous as to be effectively absent. When I interviewed Paul McMullan, the former reporter and editor at
News of the World
, he made this casual slip of the tongue: “A few times, I was put on
stories that came from police force employees—sorry—they weren't employees. Coppers we paid for good information.”

The connections between the papers and the police were perhaps best personified by the
Sun
's annual awards banquet, which recognized bravery and distinction among police officers. The decades-old practice enabled editors including Rebekah Brooks and her successor, Dominic Mohan, to cement their favored position with police and prominent politicians.

On the evening of July 7, despite the growing clamor about News International, Prime Minister David Cameron joined both at
the
Sun
's black tie affair at the five-star Savoy Hotel, featuring special appearances by the British soap opera star and victims' rights advocate Brooke Kinsella, among other luminaries. Cameron had also attended the dinner the year before. His predecessor, Gordon Brown, had done much the same when he was prime minister. But this was different: the phone hacking scandal had precipitated a crisis within the ranks of the country's top media and law enforcement echelons and denunciations from parliamentary benches front and back. Yet there was Cameron, outwardly in good cheer, circulating amid the nation's tabloid and police chieftains.

The next day, on the morning of July 8, his former communications director, onetime
News of the World
editor
Andy Coulson, was arrested on charges related to the phone hacking and corruption of public officials, which he firmly denied.

Commissioner Stephenson found himself confronting prickly questions. Earlier that year, while on sick leave, he accepted hospitality worth £12,000 from Champneys,
a luxury spa and retreat in the British countryside, as he recuperated from an illness. Champneys was one of Wallis's PR clients. It was run by one of Brooks's friends. Stephenson said he was unaware of such links. Later that month Stephenson and Yates resigned within a day of each other.

14

“GOODBYE, CRUEL WORLD”

IN THE EARLY DAYS OF the summer of 2011 the Murdochs and News Corp's British executives were moving confidently to take ownership of BSkyB, the lawsuits seemed no more than an irritation and embarrassment, and the bombshell involving the Dowlers had yet to detonate. Prime Minister Cameron attended the News Corp annual garden party at which the Murdochs held court. (Labour leader Ed Miliband attended too.)
“David [Cameron] was in great form,” News Corp's top lobbyist for the UK and Europe, Frederic Michel, texted to Craig Oliver, the prime minister's communications director.
Cameron saw Rupert Murdoch twice more that month: at a breakfast on the morning of June 20 and at a dinner for a summit of CEOs convened by the
Times of London
the same night.

On June 27
Rebekah Brooks had emailed Michel to ask when Jeremy Hunt would share his thinking on Rubicon—the acquisition. Michel replied that it would play out within days and that Hunt
believed “phone-hacking has nothing to do with the media plurality issue.” The secretary would extend a review of privacy concerns to all newspaper groups. In addition, Michel wrote, Hunt “has asked me to advise him privately in the coming weeks and guide his and No. 10's positioning.”

By this point,
Michel was puffing up his role; the lobbyist was in closer contact with Hunt's special adviser Adam Smith than Hunt himself. But the two sides—News Corp and media ministry—operated hand in glove. On July 3
Michel texted Hunt at the Wimbledon men's tennis finals and suggested a round of drinks. “Let's do that when all over,” Hunt replied.

On July 4 the
Guardian
published the Milly Dowler story. For News International, time accelerated and yet stood still. All the suspicions, all the prejudices fueled a swelling chorus from defeated rivals, abandoned political allies, and targets of the company's coverage.

Blue chip
companies withdrew their ads from
News of the World:
Sainsburys grocery chain, pharmacy giant Boots, Halifax bank, even Ford Motor's UK division. Others, such as T-Mobile, signaled they would tolerate only so much more scandal before jumping ship.

Brooks was among those who instantly registered the stakes. On July 5, 2011, as new accusations were mounting, she wrote a
memo assuring staffers she'd stick around to lead the company to resolve this crisis. “I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations.”

The accusations in the
Guardian
that her company—
her own newspaper
—had hacked into Milly Dowler's phone cut to the heart of Brooks's professional identity. “I am proud of the many successful newspaper campaigns at
The Sun
and the
News of the World
under my editorship,” she wrote, citing her work against sexual offenders. “The battle for better protection of children from paedophiles and better rights for the families and the victims of these crimes defined my editorships. Although these difficult times will continue for many
months ahead, I want you to know that News International will pursue the facts with vigour and integrity.”

PRIME MINISTER David Cameron was fighting battles on several fronts, seeking to protect his shaky standing among political allies and fending off attacks from opponents. He did not yet frontally attack the Murdochs, his champions in the press, but by this point, restraint was a relative term. “What has taken place is absolutely disgusting, and I think everyone in this House, and indeed this country, will be revolted by what they have heard and seen on their television screens,”
Cameron told MPs in the House of Commons.

Cameron's opponents in the Labour Party ridiculed him. His Liberal Democrat partners in the governing coalition undermined him by demanding that a judge lead a wide-ranging inquiry. Cameron resisted those calls, instead urging police to follow the evidence wherever it might lead and promising that full inquiries into hacking and the press would follow, probably after criminal prosecutions had played out. He could not interfere, Cameron argued, in the BSkyB process, where his culture minister, Jeremy Hunt, was playing a “quasi-judicial role”: “What we have done is follow, absolutely to the letter, the correct legal processes. That is what the Government have to do.”