News International Memos Reveal Wider Phone Hacking

By Dan Sabbagh and Sam Jones, Guardian UKv

10 July 11

2007 memos appear to show phone hacking more widespread than previously thought and that NoW paid police for information.

olice have been handed internal News International memos from 2007 that appear to acknowledge that the practice of phone hacking was more widespread than previously thought and that police were paid for helping with stories.

The memos - which were written in the wake of the jailing of the News of the World's former royal editor Clive Goodman and the newspaper's £100,000-a-year private investigator Glenn Mulcaire - allegedly show that the pair were not the only News International employees implicated in phone hacking. The memos have now been passed to police investigating the matter.

The disclosure of the memos comes four years after the then executive chairman of News International, Les Hinton, told MPs that the organisation believed Goodman was the sole staff offender.

While giving evidence to the Commons culture committee on 6 March 2007, Hinton was asked whether the News of the World had "carried out a full, rigorous internal inquiry" into phone hacking and whether he was "absolutely convinced" that the practice was limited to a single reporter.

He replied: "Yes, we have and I believe he was the only person, but that investigation, under the new editor [Colin Myler], continues."

The select committee was also told that News International had carried out an internal inquiry "of emails still on its IT systems" in May 2007.

Lawrence Abramson, managing partner of the solicitors Harbottle & Lewis, who reviewed the emails on the instructions of News International, told the committee that they had examined the evidence and concluded: "We did not find anything in those emails which appeared to us to be reasonable evidence that Clive Goodman's illegal actions were known about and supported by both or either of Andy Coulson, the editor, and Neil Wallis, the deputy editor, and/or that Ian Edmondson, the news editor, and others were carrying out similar illegal procedures."

The memos - which are reported to have been recovered by Will Lewis, News International's general manager and the man tasked with investigating the phone-hacking claims - also suggest that the organisation was paying police officers for information.

According to the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, the documents were not handed to Scotland Yard until 20 June this year and are thought to have been in the possession of Harbottle & Lewis. Peston reports that the memos appear to show Coulson, who edited the News of the World from 2003-2007, "authorising payments to police" for assistance with stories.

The Guardian understands that News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, and James Murdoch, the chairman of its parent company, News Corporation, were made aware of the memos only relatively recently.