Hackgate for Beginners - Who's Who & The Key Reports

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Thanks to a regular contributor for putting this latest information together.

The following useful information is mainly extracted from a Briefing Note for Members of Parliament, published 26 June 2012, 'Phone hacking – Inquiries and Reports'

This note provides brief details about the ongoing inquiries and investigations associated with phone hacking and the various reports produced. It also gives details of the legislation regarding relevant offences and provides links to timelines of events.

The Briefing Note is fully referenced and hyperlinked. It contains information on the Leveson Inquiry, on-going investigations by the Metropolitan Police Servive and Strathclyde Police, and the relevant offences being looked at.

WHO'S WHO

From the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (CMS) published report 'News International and Phone-hacking':

Annex 1 Who's Who (Note: This is a Names Glossary only of those who appeared before the CMS Select Committee)

Annex 2 Timeline of Events

BACKGROUND - RELEVANT REPORTS 2003-2010

Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)
- May 2006  'What Price Privacy? The Unlawful Trade in Confidential Personal Information'

Information Commissioner's Office
- Dec 2006 'What Price Privacy Now?' (ICO)

Press Complaints Commission (PCC)
- May 2007  'Report on Subterfuge and Newsgathering'

Press Complaints Commissionn (PCC)
- Nov 2009  'Report on Phone Message Tapping Allegations' (This report was subsequently withdrawn  July 2011)

Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (CMS)
- May 2003  'Privacy and Media Intrusion'

Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee
- July 2007  'Self–Regulation of the Press' 

Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee
- Feb 2010  'Press Standards, Privacy and Libel'

KEY REPORTS AND WITNESS EVIDENCE 2011-2012

Footage of hearings evidence is available for the two following Key Reports, archived on Parliament TV.

Parliament TV archive is searchable so, for ease, dates of witness appearances are included below.

HOME AFFAIRS SELECT COMMITTEE (HAC)
- July 2011  Report: 'Unauthorised Tapping into or Hacking of Mobile Communications' 

Witnesses

Tuesday 29 March 2011
Chris Bryant, MP
John Yates, Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police

Tuesday 5 April 2011
Mr Keir Starmer QC, Director of Public Prosecutions

Tuesday 26 April 2011
Christopher Graham, Information Commissioner Tuesday

14 June 2011
Ms Julie Steele, Head of Fraud, Risk and Security, Vodafone UK; Mr Adrian Gorhan, Group Head of Fraud, Security and Business Continuity, Telefonica O2; and Mr James Blendis, Vice President Legal, Everything Everywhere (Orange UK and T-Mobile UK)

Tuesday 12 July 2011
John Yates, Assistant Commissioner, Specialist Operations, Metropolitan Police
Mr Peter Clarke, Former Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police
Mr Andy Hayman, Former Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Sue Akers, QPM, Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Head of Operation
Weeting, Metropolitan Police

Tuesday 19 July 2011
Sir Paul Stephenson, Commissioner, Metropolitan Police
Dick Fedorcio, OBE, Director of Public Affairs, Metropolitan Police
John Yates, Assistant Commissioner, Specialist Operations, Metropolitan Police
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, former Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, QC, Director of Public Prosecutions
Mark Lewis, Solicitor advocate, Taylor Hampton Solicitors Limited

CULTURE, MEDIA and SPORT SELECT COMMITTEE
-May 2012  Report: 'News International and Phone-hacking'

Witnesses

Thursday 24 March 2011
John Yates QPM, Acting Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service

Tuesday 19 July 2011
Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, News Corporation, and James Murdoch, Chairman, News International
Rebekah Brooks, former Chief Executive, News International

Tuesday 6 September 2011
Jonathan Chapman, former Director of Legal Affairs, News International, and Daniel Cloke, former Group HR Director, News International
Tom Crone, former Legal Manager, News Group Newspapers, and Colin Myler, former Editor, News of the World

Wednesday 19 October 2011
Julian Pike, Partner, Farrer & Co.
Mark Lewis, Partner, Taylor Hampton Solicitors

Monday 24 October 2011
Les Hinton, Former Executive Chairman, News International

Thursday 10 November 2011
James Murdoch, Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (International), News Corporation

[Index]

You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com

Hackgate for Beginners - Controversial Cops and News Corp.

[Back to The Leveson Inquiry]

During the Hackgate Scandal there have been a number of police officers linked to News Corp.  Here’s a few key names you might see popping up when following the Hackgate Scandal:

Andy Hayman – A former Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary and Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations at London's Metropolitan Police, resigning in December 2007 following allegations about expense claims and alleged improper conduct with a female member of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and a female sergeant.  After his resignation he would face criticism, along with Sir Ian Blair, from the press and Independent Police Complaints Commission over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

During Operation Caryatid, the investigation into the interception of phone messages at Clarence House by journalists from the News of the World, the officer in charge of the investigation reported to Andy Hayman.  Hayman told the Home Affairs Select Committee in July 2011 that he had met with News International executives during the investigation, something he considered as not unusual as it would have been odd if he had cancelled the dinner.

The Guardian reported that some police sources said it was “unfortunate” that Andy Hayman went on to work for News International as a columnist for The Times, where even with his knowledge of Operation Caryatid he wrote that there were “perhaps a handful” of hacking victims.

John Yates - A former Assistant Commissioner in the London Metropolitan Police Service, who resigned in July 2011 over criticism of a July 2009 review of Operation Caryatid, in which he decided in one 8 hour sessions that there was no fresh material that could lead to convictions. 

John Yates began to receive criticism when the House of Commons home affairs committee began to look into the way in which the review had been carried out, with a number of statements made by John Yates about the review were contradicted by the evidence of the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer.  He received further criticism when it was revealed that he, Sir Ian Blair, Andy Hayman, and Paul Stephenson had attended a number of meals with representative from various News International newspaper titles around the time of the review. 

In a July 9^th 2011 interview with the Sunday Telegraph he expressed “extreme regret” for failing in the initial phone hacking inquiry, but dismissed any suggestion of corruption or improper relationships on his part.  On July 18^th 2011 he announced his resignation in a brief statement.

In May 2012 a report into phone hacking by the House of Commons select committee found that John Yates and Keri Starmer were culpable for failing to properly investigate evidence of phone hacking when it was first brought to their attention during the Operation Caryatid investigation.  The report concluded: "The police at that time had no interest or willingness to uncover the full extent of the phone-hacking which had taken place."

Paul Stephenson – The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who resigned after questions were asked about his relationship with former News International journalist Neil Wallis, who was arrested in July 2011 as part of Operation Weeting.

Paul Stephenson first met Wallis in 2006 during his time at the News of the World, and hired Neil Wallis to provide “strategic communication advice and support” to the Metropolitan Police on a part time basis from October 2009 to September 2010 while the Met's Deputy Director of Public Affairs was on extended sick leave.  Among other things this involved advising the assistant commissioner at the time, John Yates, who had recently reviewed Operation Caryatid in July 2009.

Questions about Neil Wallis’s relationship with the Metropolitan Police began went it emerged that he had worked for the police.  It was revealed that Paul Stephenson had met or dined with Neil Wallis on eight separate occasions between 2006 and 2010, more than any senior executive or journalist on any other newspapers, and that he had accepted £12,000-worth of hospitality at a health spa for which Wallis worked as a PR consultant, and where Rebekah Brooks’ husband Charlie Brooks runs an alternative medicine "kriotherapy" centre.

On July 14^th 2011 Neil Wallis was arrested as part of Operation Weeting, and on July 17^th 2011 Paul Stephenson made a lengthy statement announcing his intention to resign as commissioner, saying that questions surrounding his integrity would otherwise become detrimental to the Met as a whole.

Ray Adams – A former Metropolitan police commander who left the Metropolitan Police and joined the News Corp owned subsidiary NDS UK Ltd after a brief stint at Kroll. 

In July 1987 Adams was being interviewed by police corruption investigators when his close associate DC Alan “Taffy” Holmes shot himself.  DC Holmes was the corrupt police officer who Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn claim in their book on police corruption “The Untouchables” had been working with the recently murdered Daniel Morgan to expose claims of police corruption that possibly involved passing information to the News of the World.

Later on Ray Adams would be involved with the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry, and the Macpherson report into the Lawrence murder detailed suspicions held by the Lawrence family about Adam’s alleged links with Clifford Norris, the father of one of Lawrence’s murderers David Norris, and Kenneth Noye, also noting that Adams’ evidence had “strange features” to it.

In March 2012 BBC Panorama claimed that Ray Adams had worked closely with a hacker, Lee Gibling, to set up the website The House of Ill-Compute (THOiC), which was intended to gather cable and satellite hackers to one site run by Lee Gibling, and therefore under the control of Ray Adams.  Lee Gibling claimed that Ray Adams provided him with software and instructions to hack their major rival ONDigital.  Those claims were supported by documents passed on to Panorama.

Later Lee Gibling would also allege that Ray Adams used information from the THOiC website to strong arm a number of cable and satellite companies into giving up internal operational security to NDS UK Ltd, claiming that hacks on THOiC showed those companies weren’t providing adequate security to protect BSkyB’s revenue, and that unless they handed over their operational security operations to NDS BSkyB would remove their channels from those companies.  Once NDS took over operational security they used the information from THOiC to arrest various individuals hacking those companies.

[Index]

You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com

Hackgate for Beginners - Index

Index

Past Police Operations
Current Police Operations
The Murder of Daniel Morgan
The Leveson Inquiry
Controversial Cops and News Corp.
Who's Who & The Key Reports


[Forward to Past Police Operations]

You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com

Hackgate for Beginners - The Leveson Inquiry

[Back to the Murder of Daniel Morgan]

Build up to the Inquiry

After Operation Weeting commenced in January 2011 there began to be calls for an independent inquiry into phone hacking from a number of political and private figures, along with a number of newspapers, in particular the Guardian, who in July 4^th 2011 reported that the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler had been hacked by News of the World journalists, who deleted voicemails left on the phone, creating a moment of false hope for her family.

With this revelation the phone hacking scandal soon became the top of news agenda, with celebrities and other public figures reacting with disgust and calling for an immediate public inquiry, and on July 6^th British Prime Minister David Cameron promised that he would set up a public inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World, describing the claims in the Guardian story as “disgusting”.  Opposition leader Ed Miliband went onto say that David Cameron had failed “to react with the necessary speed” and urged him to set up a wide-ranging, judge-led public inquiry immediately.

The setting up of the Inquiry

On July 17^th 2011 David Cameron set out the remit for the inquiry under the Inquiry Act 2005 (requiring witnesses to give evidence under oath), naming Lord Justice Leveson as the chairman of the inquiry, and stating that it would look into the ethics and culture of the British media as well as specific claims about phone hacking at the News of the World, the shortcomings of the initial police inquiry, and allegations of illicit payments to police by the press. 

Lord Justice Leveson appointed a panel of 6 assessors, who are experts in various areas relevant to the Inquiry, and described their role during the September 28^th meeting of the Inquiry:

“I intend that each should have a central role in the work and that the final report will be a collaborative effort.  I will strive for unanimity; if any particular recommendation is not unanimous, I shall make the contrary view clear.”

He also appointed a team of 6 barristers to act as Counsel to the Inquiry, who provide legal advice to the Inquiry, as well as questioning witnesses.  If you’ve been watching the Inquiry you’ll probably be most familiar with Robert Jay QC, who regularly questions witnesses, and has built up a bit of a fan base among followers of the Leveson Inquiry.

Lord Leveson has said the inquiry will be in two parts, the first being split into four modules.  The first part will address:
And the second part will address:

The culture, practices and ethics of the press, including contacts between the press and politicians and the press and the police; it is to consider the extent to which the current regulatory regime has failed and whether there has been a failure to act upon any previous warnings about media misconduct.

The four modules that make up part one are:

The extent of unlawful or improper conduct within News International, other media organisations or other organisations. It will also consider the extent to which any relevant police force investigated allegations relating to News International, and whether the police received corrupt payments or were otherwise complicit in misconduct.

Module 1: The relationship between the press and the public and looks at phone-hacking and other potentially illegal behaviour.

Module 2: The relationships between the press and police and the extent to which that has operated in the public interest.

Module 3: The relationship between press and politicians.

Module 4: Recommendations for a more effective policy and regulation that supports the integrity and freedom of the press while encouraging the highest ethical standards.

At the same time Lord Leveson also detailed the Inquiry’s terms of reference.

Lord Leveson also announced a series of briefing sessions would take place before the Inquiry began to provide the members of the Inquiry with factual background information that was relevant to the inquiry:

Briefing Session 1: Techniques of access to personal data

Briefing Session 2: Current media law

Briefing Session 3: Regulatory systems

He also held a series of seminars “to enable consideration of the central public policy issues in the Inquiry’s terms of reference to be enriched by and examined from across a range of informed perspectives.”

Seminar 1: The Competitive Pressures on the Press and the Impact on Journalism  

Seminar 2: The Rights and Responsibilities of the Press

Seminar 3: Supporting a free press and high standards – approaches to regulation

Core participants

One key feature of the Leveson Inquiry is the assignment of Core Participant (CP) status to individuals or organisations, who can become CPs if they meet one of more of the following criteria:

• The person played, or may have played, a direct and significant role in relation to the matters to which the inquiry relates;
• The person has a significant interest in an important aspect of those matters to which the inquiry relates; or
• The person may be subject to explicit or significant criticism during the inquiry proceedings or in its report.

Among other things Core Participants have a right to view witness statements from people giving evidence to the inquiry before they appear, and have the right to appoint a legal representative who may apply to the chairman to ask questions of a witness giving oral evidence to the Inquiry.  Current Core Participants include a number of newspaper groups, the Metropolitan Police, and the NUJ.  The victims are for the most part represented by David Sherborne, who you will occasionally see asking questions to various witnesses.

The Leveson Inquiry so far

Module one of the Leveson Inquiry made headlines with a raft of celebrities and high profile figures appearing and describing how they’d be harassed by the press.  The first day of Module one had the parents of Milly Dowler talking about their treatment by the press, followed by Hugh Grant, which made headlines from day one.  That that followed over the next weeks by high profile figures such as Steve Coogan, JK Rowling, Max Mosley, and Charlotte Church, among others, keeping the story in the press.  As the weeks passed media interest waned, with only the occasional absurd statements such as “privacy is for paedos” making it to the wider press. 

However, as the Inquiry has gone on a picture has been built showing the relationship between the press, politicians, and police that’s shown collusion on many levels and in a sometimes illegal fashion.  Many witnesses for organisations under the spotlight have shown they are unable to recall facts about key events, or have used such convoluted language to avoid admitting to anything under oath that they are practically unintelligible.  Due to current police investigations it’s been impossible to ask certain witnesses about events they’ve been arrested for, for example Rebekah Brooks, but more and more information is being made available which exposes criminality, corruption and sleaze at a variety of organisations, including the British government.

It would be quite impossible to cover the many developments in the Leveson Inquiry, but a number of news websites have good archives of past day’s events, in particular The Guardian and the BBC News website.

[Forward to Controversial Cops and News Corp.]
[Index]

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Hackgate for Beginners - The Murder of Daniel Morgan

[Back to Current Police Operations]

In March 1987 Daniel Morgan, a private detective, was murdered in Sydenham in south east London, just as he was reportedly close to revealing police corruption with links to the News of the World.

You might ask why we would want to look at a murder that took place 25 years ago, but it’s important to understand that the collusion between the police and press that’s being uncovered now isn’t just about events that took place in the past few years, but a pattern of corruption that goes back many decades, and that many of the people involved with past corruption are still involved with the Hackgate scandal even now.

After repeated failed police inquiries into the murder which themselves have been mired in corruption the family of Daniel Morgan are still seeking justice, and have spent the past two decades running the Justice 4 Daniel campaign.

Southern Investigations

In 1984 Daniel Morgan and Jonathan Rees set up the detective agency Southern Investigations.  Jonathan Rees is alleged to have had a “network of corrupt police who were involved in widespread criminality and used Southern Investigations as a conduit for drugs and money”, and that Rees “counted many officers as friends. One of his specialities was to use his "friends" in the force to provide information which he sold to tabloid newspapers.”

On the other hand Daniel Morgan’s role “involved him acting as a bailiff or utilising his particular talent for remembering car registration plates and telephone numbers”.

It is believed that at the time of his murder Daniel Morgan was planning to expose police corruption, described by his brother as “police involvement with criminals, involvement with drugs and weapons importation."

More recently, Tom Watson MP alleged in a Commons adjournment debate that Daniel Morgan has approached Alex Muranchak of the News of the World with a story making allegations about police corruption a week before he died, and was offered £40,000 for the story.  He described the relationship between Jonathan Rees and Alex Marunchak as "a close association between Rees and Marunchak ... a relationship that was so close they both had companies registered at the same address".  Watson also stated that "thanks to a Guardian investigation we also know that Southern Investigations paid the debts of Marunchak ".

Alex Marunchak would go on to deny those allegations, as well as other allegations made by Tom Watson.

The death of Daniel Morgan

At 9.30pm on Tuesday March 10^th 1987 Daniel Morgan’s body was discovered next to his BMW in the parking lot of the Golden Lion pub.  An axe, wrapped in Elastoplasts to obscure fingerprints, was protruding at a right angle from his face, his pockets torn open, with notes he had been seen writing missing, but with his wallet and watch still on his body, and he was still holding the two packets of crisps purchased inside the pub.

He had let the Golden Lion pub at 8:55pm after meeting with Jonathan Rees to discuss an issue that was putting pressure on their already fraught relationship.  Rees had claimed he had been robbed while transporting £18,000 for a client of Southern Investigations, Belmont Car Auctions, with at least one moonlighting police officer.  Both Morgan and Belmont Car Auctions believed this was a lie, and Rees and his associates had taken the money for themselves.

At the 1988 inquest into the murder the Southern Investigations accountant Kevin Lennon said that Jonathan Rees had told him “I've got the perfect solution for Daniel's murder. My mates at Catford nick are going to arrange it” and went on to say "He went on to explain to me that if they didn't do it themselves the police would arrange for some person over whom they had some criminal charge pending to carry out Daniel's murder."

The initial police investigation into the murder

Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery at Catford police station was assigned to the case, failing to reveal to his superiors that he had been working for Southern Investigations

At the 1988 inquest Kevin Lennon said Rees wanted Morgan dead after a row: "John Rees explained that, when or after Daniel Morgan had been killed, he would be replaced by a friend of his who was a serving policeman, Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery", and eventually would end up in business with Jonathan Rees at Southern Investigations, recruiting corrupt police officers, and was later convicted for the possession of child pornography.

Sid Fillery and Jonathan Rees would later be arrested in 1987 on suspicion of murder, along with the brothers Glenn and Garry Vian and two Metropolitan police officers, but eventually all of them were released without charge.

Inquiries into the murder

Over the next 20 years five investigations would look into the murder of Daniel Morgan.  The initial investigation into the murder by the Metropolitan Police focused on Sid Fillery and Jonathan Rees, both who denied involvement in the murder.  This was followed by an inquiry by Hampshire Police in 1988 focusing on Jonathan Rees and another man, but the charges were dropped because of a lack of evidence, with the Hampshire inquiry's 1989 report to the Police Complaints Authority stated that "no evidence whatsoever" had been found of police involvement in the murder.  During this period Sid Fillery left the police to join Southern Investigations as Jonathan Rees’ business partner.

In 1999 Operation Nigeria began to investigate Southern Investigations, with bugs being placed inside the Southern Investigations offices by the police.  The operation ceased when Jonathan Rees was recorded conspiring with a corrupt police officer to plant cocaine on an innocent woman in order to discredit her during a custody battle, and in December 2000 he was jailed for seven years.

In 2002-2003 a fourth inquiry began, involving the bugging of a suspect’s car and the home of Glenn Vian.  The investigation obtained evidence that linked a number of individuals to the murder, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a prosecution.

The fifth inquiry took place in 2006, headed by Detective Superintendent David Cook was set up in secret after Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair declared that the first investigation had been compromised by the involvement of Sid Fillery.

Concerns over connections between Masonic Lodge members and the murder required the 36 police officers involved with the case to state they had never been Freemasons, with Cook describing the murder as being one of the worst kept secrets in south-east London, claiming “a whole cabal of people” knew the identity of at least some of those involved.  He also claimed attempts had been made to smear Daniel Morgan’s character and there had been attempts to link him with Colombian drug dealers.  He identified the main suspects as "white Anglo-Saxons".

Yet again bugs were placed, Jonathan Rees, Sid Fillery, and Glenn and Gary Vian were arrested, along with a builder, James Cook, all on suspicion of murder, plus other related charges.  This time however, the suspects made it to court.

The 2011 Old Bailey trial

The trial was badly handled by the prosecution, with 3 supergrass informers being dismissed as key witnesses, resulting in a stay of prosecution for Sid Fillery and James Cook being discharged. 

In March 2011 the Director of Public Prosecutions abandoned the case and all remaining charges were dropped.  The case had yet to reach the stage where it would look at the murder as it was still dealing with preliminary issues when the prosecution collapsed.  The judge noted the case’s vastness and complexity, and considered that the prosecution had been principled and right to drop the case, but the police had “ample grounds to justify the arrest and prosecution of the defendants”.

A massive amount of evidence had been gathered, over 750,000 documents, with four more crates of evidence being discovered after the trial collapsed. 

Links to the News of the World

After the trial collapsed it was revealed that Jonathan Rees had been working for the News of the World, earning £150,000 supplying illegally obtained information about figures in the public eye.  After serving the prison sentence for perverting the course of justice after the Operation Nigeria inquiry Andy Coulson, then editor of the News of the World, hired Jonathan Rees, and worked regularly with the Sunday and Daily Mirror as well.  Andy Coulson was later hired by David Cameron as director of communications despite warnings about Andy Coulson’s hiring of the convicted criminal Jonathan Rees.

Using a network of corrupt police officers he illegally obtained information on a variety of public figures, including the Royal family, and was also alleged to have commissioned burglaries on behalf of journalists.  However, despite detailed evidence the Metropolitan Police failed to pursue any action against Rees, even to the point of taking the News of the World at their word that Clive Goodman had worked alone when he was convicted for intercepting phone calls from Clarence House.

[Forward to The Leveson Inquiry]
[Index]

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Hackgate for Beginners - Past Police Operations

This is part of a series of posts intended to help newcomers to the Hackgate scandal to understand the many different elements that make up the scandal.  With so much of the focus being on the Leveson Inquiry it’s easy to lose sight of some of the other aspects of the scandal, something this series of posts will hopefully correct.

In this first article I will be covering a number of past police operations that are relevant to the current hacking scandal.

Previous Operations

There have been a number of previous police operations relating to the current Hackgate scandal that met with varying levels of success, for a variety of reasons.

The most significant investigations were Operation Motorman and Operation Glade in 2003.  These Operations were the result of the ICO discovering the scale of the problem when documents were found on the premises of Surrey private investigator John Boyall that revealed the misuse of data from the Police National Computer, and this led to the two operations.

As an interesting side note, until the autumn of 2001 the News of the World was a regular client of John Boyall, but when News of the World's assistant editor, Greg Miskiw fell out with Boyall, Miskiw poached Boyall's assistant Glenn Mulcaire, who would go on to hack the voicemail messages of public figures at the behest of the News of the World.

Operation Motorman

A  2003 investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office into allegations of offences under the Data Protection Act by the British press led by ICO Senior Investigator Alec Owens triggered by discoveries at the premises of Surrey private investigator John Boyall.

The discoveries at John Boyall’s premises led to the search of the Hampshire offices of the private detective Steve Whittamore, where a huge cache of documents were revealed.  These documents revealed, in precise detail, a network of police and public employees illegally selling personal information obtained from government computer systems, which were passed onto over 300 journalists working for various British newspapers, including nearly every national newspaper.

In 2006 the Information Commissioner’s Office released a report, What Price Privacy, which closely examined Operation Motorman and which was followed in the following year by What Price Privacy Now, which including a table detailing transactions with Steve Whittamore by the number of requests per paper, and number of journalists requesting jobs per paper.  The top five included the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Sunday People, Daily Mirror, and News of the World.  However, it’s impossible to know if the jobs requested by the papers were illegal as Steven Whittamore did a mixture of legal and illegal jobs, so it’s possible that certain papers were more prone to requesting illegal jobs than others.

Therefore it’s believed by some that the release of the Operation Motorman files could uncover a scandal much larger on scale than the current News of the World focused scandal, involving many news organisations, and in March 2012 the Hacked Off website started to a campaign to have the Operation Motorman files published by the Leveson Inquiry and in April 2012 blogger Paul Staines of the Guido Fawkes blog published a redacted version of data taken from the document known as the Blue Book, containing jobs requested by staff at News International titles, including jobs requests by Rebekah Brooks (then Wade).  The ICO strongly condemned the release, and Paul Staines was summoned to appear before the ICO. 

Since then unredacted versions of the Blue Book have appeared online for brief periods of time, and an eventual leak of the unredacted files seems inevitable.

For further reading I’d recommend this article by Nick Davies of the Guardian, Operation Motorman: the full story revealed.

Operation Glade

An operation that ran alongside Operation Motorman, and investigated the way in which the information from the Police National Computer was being obtained.  Glade discovered that Whittamore's ultimate source was a civilian worker at Wandsworth police station, south London, Paul Marshall, who was logging phoney 999 calls in order to justify accessing the computer records of public figures that were of interest to newspapers. Marshall was passing the information to a former police officer, Alan King, who passed it to a private investigator, John Boyall, who supplied it to Whittamore.

In April 2005 Whittamore, Boyall Alan King, Paul Marshall appeared at Blackfriars crown court and pleaded guilty to procuring confidential police data to sell to newspapers, with all four receiving a suspended sentence.  The News of the World was named as one of their buyers, and the judge at the trial questioned why no-one from Fleet Street titles had been prosecuted, a question that appears to have remained unanswered. 

DCI Brendan Gilmour, who worked on Operation Glade, appeared at the Leveson Inquiry on May 9^th 2012, and stated that seven journalists were interviewed under caution in 2004 after evidence suggested they had been commissioning private investigators to obtain information illegally, and said they were unable to establish if the journalists were aware of the methods used to gather the information requested were illegal.  Robert Jay QC, inquiry counsel, pointed out the journalists were sent written invitations to attend places to be interviewed under caution, and had legal advice, meaning answers could have been orchestrated in advance.

Operation Varec

A September 2010 police operation that investigated claims made in a New York Times article by former News of the World journalist Sean Hoare that Andy Coulson, the then editor of the News of the World, had encouraged him to hack phones.  It also looked into claims by Kelly Hoppen that News of the World journalist Dan Evan had hacked her phone.  Sean Hoare was interviewed but according to the police report provided no information, and no actionable evidence was found in the Kelly Hoppen case either, so it was decided no further action would be taken.  A more detailed examination of the case can be read here.

Sean Hoare died in 2011.

Operation Millipede 

A 2008 Serious Organised Crime Agency led investigation into the practice of blagging which resulted in the prosecution and jailing of Daniel Summers, Philip Campbell Smith, Graham Freeman, and Adam John Spears. 

Philip Campbell Smith was later investigated by Operation Kalmyk, part of Operation Tuleta, into accusations that he hacked the computer of the former army intelligence officer Ian Hurst aka Martin Ingram, who was involved with the alleged spy Stakeknife.  Philip Campbell Smith was accused of hacking the computer in an attempt to get information on the alleged spy for the News of the World.

Operation Caryatid

A 2006 police operation overseen by Peter Clarke that investigated the interception of phone messages from the official residence of The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Harry Clarence House after two entries in Clive Goodman’s column for the News of the World raised suspicion with Royal Household staff that Goodman had access to the Royal Family's voicemails.

Clive Goodman was imprisoned for four months in January 2007 along with his co-conspirator Glenn Mulcaire.  Clive Goodman was sacked by the News of the World that same month, but would later receive a £240000 settlement from News International as according to News International his dismissal was unfair as they had failed to "follow statutory procedures" in sacking Goodman.

Andy Coulson, who was News of the World editor at the time, resigned as a result of the court case, and both Andy Coulson and Clive Goodman were arrested in on July 8th and released on police bail in connection with new phone hacking related charges.

The narrowness of the investigation has been questioned, especially with the recent revelations about hacking at the News of the World, and The former commissioner of the Metropolitan Sir Paul Stephenson was asked at the Leveson Inquiry why phone hacking was not investigated further in 2009 when Assistant Commissioner John Yates was asked to review Operation Caryatid, ruling that there was no fresh material that could lead to convictions.  Sir Paul Stephenson said there had been a “flawed assumption” that the original investigation had been sufficient, and the force felt it couldn’t expand its resources without further evidence, especially at a time when the priority was investigating terrorism.

Operation Reproof

A 2002 to 2004 Devon and Cornwall Police operation examining how confidential information was being leaked and obtained by various individuals and groups. 

It discovered a network of individuals being passed on by current and retired police officers to a number of individuals.

A more detailed examination of Operation Reproof and related operations can be found here.

Operation Nigeria

The police surveillance of Jonathan Rees run private investigation company South Investigations between May and September 1999.  The operation was run by the Metropolitan police's anti-corruption squad CIB3, and ended when evidence was uncovered that Jonathan Rees was involved with a plot to plant drugs on a woman so her husband could win a custody battle.  This resulted in Rees and a serving detective, Austin Warnes being jailed.

Transcripts from the operation recorded reports from a variety of newspapers, including the News of the World, Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror, requesting jobs and revealed collusion between private investigators and corrupt police officers.

This post contains more information about links between Operation Nigeria and other police operations, particularly the links between the News of the World and Southern Investigations.

Operation Russia

A 1987 investigation led by John Yates into police corruption in South East London by a number of officers, including Ray Adams, who went on to work for the News Corp owned NDS UK Ltd.  It’s believed there’s a number of links between the officers involved with the police corruption and the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and the murder of the private investigator Daniel Morgan, which has also been linked to News International.  A more detailed examination of the case can be read here.

In the next part of Hackgate for Beginners I'll be looking at the current police operations into various aspects of the hacking scandal.


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