Clive Goodman's letter to News International

News International
1 Virginia Street
London E198 1HR 

March 2, 2007 

Dear Mr Cloke, 

Re: Notice of termination of employment 

I refer to Les Hinton’s letter of February 5 2007 informing me of my dismissal for alleged gross misconduct.
The letter identifies the reason for the dismissal as “recent events”. I take this to mean my plea of guilty to conspiracy to intercept the voicemail messages of three employees of the royal family.
I am appealing against this decision on the following grounds:
i The decision is perverse in that the actions leading to this criminal charge were carried out with the full knowledge and support of [BLANKED OUT]. Payment for Glen (sic) Mulcaire’s services was arranged by [BLANKED OUT].
ii The decision is inconsistent, because [BLANKED OUT] and other members of staff were carrying out the same illegal procedures. The prosecution counsel, the counsel for Glen (sic) Mulcaire, and the Judge at the sentencing hearing agreed that other News of the World employees were the clients for Mulcaire’s five solo substantive charges. This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the Editor. As far as I am aware, no other member of staff has faced disciplinary action, much less dismissal.
iii My conviction and imprisonment cannot be the real reason for my dismissal. The legal manager, Tom Crone, attended virtually every meeting of my legal team and was given full access to the Crown Prosecution Service’s evidence files. He, and other senior staff of the paper, had long advance knowledge that I would plead guilty. Despite this, the paper continued to employ me. Throughout my suspension, I was given book serialisations to write and was consulted on several occasions about royal stories they needed to check. The paper continued to employ me for a substantial part of my custodial sentence.
iv Tom Crone and the editor promised on many occasions that I could come back to a job at the newspaper if I did not implicate the paper or any of its staff in my mitigation plea. I did not, and I expect the paper to honour its promise to me.
v The dismissal is automatically unfair as the company failed to go through the minimum required statutory dismissal procedures.

Yours sincerely,

Clive Goodman

cc Stuart Kuttner, Managing Editor, News of the World

Les Hinton, Executive Chairman, News International Ltd

Phone hacking: News of the World reporter's letter reveals cover-up

The News of the World's former royal correpsondent, Clive Goodman, who was jailed over phone hacking. A letter from him claims phone hacking was widely discussed at the paper. 

Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World's disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman.
In the letter, which was written four years ago but published only on Tuesday, Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support" of other senior journalists, whom he named.
The claims are acutely troubling for the prime minister, David Cameron, who hired Coulson as his media adviser on the basis that he knew nothing about phone hacking. And they confront Rupert and James Murdoch with the humiliating prospect of being recalled to parliament to justify the evidence which they gave last month on the aftermath of Goodman's allegations. In a separate letter, one of the Murdochs' own law firms claim that parts of that evidence were variously "hard to credit", "self-serving" and "inaccurate and misleading".
Goodman's claims also raise serious questions about Rupert Murdoch's close friend and adviser, Les Hinton, who was sent a copy of the letter but failed to pass it to police and who then led a cast of senior Murdoch personnel in telling parliament that they believed Coulson knew nothing about the interception of the voicemail of public figures and that Goodman was the only journalist involved.
The letters from Goodman and from the London law firm Harbottle & Lewis are among a cache of paperwork published by the Commons culture, media and sport select committee. One committee member, the Labour MP Tom Watson, said Goodman's letter was "absolutely devastating". He said: "Clive Goodman's letter is the most significant piece of evidence that has been revealed so far. It completely removes News International's defence. This is one of the largest cover-ups I have seen in my lifetime."
Goodman's letter is dated 2 March 2007, soon after he was released from a four-month prison sentence. It is addressed to News International's director of human resources, Daniel Cloke, and registers his appeal against the decision of Hinton, the company's then chairman, to sack him for gross misconduct after he admitted intercepting the voicemail of three members of the royal household. Goodman lists five grounds for his appeal.
He argues that the decision is perverse because he acted "with the full knowledge and support" of named senior journalists and that payments for the private investigator who assisted him, Glenn Mulcaire, were arranged by another senior journalist. The names of the journalists have been redacted from the published letter at the request of Scotland Yard, who are investigating the affair.
Goodman then claims that other members of staff at the News of the World were also hacking phones. Crucially, he adds: "This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the editor." He reveals that the paper continued to consult him on stories even though they knew he was going to plead guilty to phone hacking and that the paper's then lawyer, Tom Crone, knew all the details of the case against him.
In a particularly embarrassing allegation, he adds: "Tom Crone and the editor promised on many occasions that I could come back to a job at the newspaper if I did not implicate the paper or any of its staff in my mitigation plea. I did not, and I expect the paper to honour its promise to me." In the event, Goodman lost his appeal. But the claim that the paper induced him to mislead the court is one that may cause further problems for News International.
Two versions of his letter were provided to the committee. One which was supplied by Harbottle & Lewis has been redacted to remove the names of journalists, at the request of police. The other, which was supplied by News International, has been redacted to remove not only the names but also all references to hacking being discussed in Coulson's editorial meetings and to Coulson's offer to keep Goodman on staff if he agreed not to implicate the paper.
The company also faces a new claim that it misled parliament. In earlier evidence to the select committee, in answer to questions about whether it had bought Goodman's silence, it had said he was paid off with a period of notice plus compensation of no more than £60,000. The new paperwork, however, reveals that Goodman was paid a full year's salary, worth £90,502.08, plus a further £140,000 in compensation as well as £13,000 to cover his lawyer's bill. Watson said: "It's hush money. I think they tried to buy his silence." Murdoch's executives have always denied this.
When Goodman's letter reached News International four years ago, it set off a chain reaction which now threatens embarrassment for Rupert and James Murdoch personally. The company resisted Goodman's appeal, and he requested disclosure of emails sent to and from six named senior journalists on the paper. The company collected 2,500 emails and sent them to Harbottle & Lewis and asked the law firm to examine them.
Harbottle & Lewis then produced a letter, which has previously been published by the select committee in a non-redacted form: "I can confirm that 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."
In their evidence to the select committee last month, the Murdochs presented this letter as evidence that the company had been given a clean bill of health. However, the Metropolitan police have since said that the emails contained evidence of "alleged payments by corrupt journalists to corrupt police officers". And the former director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, who examined a small sample of the emails, said they contained evidence of indirect hacking, breaches of national security and serious crime.
In a lengthy reply, Harbottle & Lewis say it was never asked to investigate whether crimes generally had been committed at the News of the World but had been instructed only to say whether the emails contained evidence that Goodman had hacked phones with "the full knowledge and support" of the named senior journalists. The law firm reveals that the letter was the result of a detailed negotiation with News International's senior lawyer, Jon Chapman, and it refused to include a line which he suggested, that, having seen a copy of Goodman's letter of 2 March: "We did not find anything that we consider to be directly relevant to the grounds of appeal put forward by him."
In a lengthy criticism of the Murdochs' evidence to the select committee last month, Harbottle & Lewis says it finds it "hard to credit" James Murdoch's repeated claim that News International "rested on" its letter as part of their grounds for believing that Goodman was a "rogue reporter". It says News International's view of the law firm's role is "self-serving" and that Rupert Murdoch's claim that it was hired "to find out what the hell was going on" was "inaccurate and misleading", although it adds that he may have been confused or misinformed about its role.
Harbottle & Lewis writes: "There was absolutely no question of the firm being asked to provide News International with a clean bill of health which it could deploy years later in wholly different contexts for wholly different purposes … The firm was not being asked to provide some sort of 'good conduct certificate' which News International could show to parliament … Nor was it being given a general retainer, as Mr Rupert Murdoch asserted it was, 'to find out what the hell was going on'."
The law firm's challenge to the Murdochs' evidence follows an earlier claim made jointly by the paper's former editor and former lawyer that a different element of James Murdoch's evidence to the committee was "mistaken". He had told the committee that he had paid more than £1m to settle a legal action brought by Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers Association without knowing that Taylor's lawyers had obtained an email from a junior reporter to the paper's chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, containing 35 transcripts of voicemail messages. Crone and the former editor, Colin Myler, last month challenged this.
In letters published by the committee, the former News of the World lawyer repeats his position. He says this email was "the sole reason" for settling Taylor's case. He says he took it with him to a meeting with James Murdoch in June 2008 when he explained the need to settle: "I have no doubt that I informed Mr Murdoch of its existence, of what it was and where it came from."
Myler, in a separate letter also published on Tuesday, endorses Crone's account. Their evidence raises questions about James Murdoch's failure to tell the police or his shareholders about the evidence of crime contained in the email.
Watson said that both Murdochs should be recalled to the committee to explain their evidence. Hinton, who resigned last month, may join them. Four days after Goodman sent his letter, Hinton gave evidence to the select committee in which he made no reference to any of the allegations contained in the letter, but told MPs: "I believe absolutely that Andy [Coulson] did not have knowledge of what was going on". He added that he had carried out a full, rigorous internal inquiry and that he believed Goodman was the only person involved.

Phone hacking:

Could anyone else be picking up your messages?

Can my mobile phone be hacked? A question a lot of us have been asking over recent days, for obvious reasons. So I set about finding out about the threats to your phone and mine.

I called the network I've been using recently, O2, in search of reassurance. They told me that the original hacking technique which made the phones of anyone who used voicemail insecure does now appear to be obsolete.
It involved exploiting the fact that mobile phone operators gave customers default pin numbers - 0000 or 1234 - to access their voicemail from another phone.
O2 say that when they investigated back in 2006, 40 customers were identified as having had their voicemail accessed without authorisation by the News of The World's Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire. After that the network changed its system.
"A customer is now required to personalise their PIN number from their mobile phone if they wish to access their voicemails from another phone. If a customer does not choose a PIN, they will not be able to remotely access any of their voicemails."
But there are other threats out there - just look at this post on the technology site CNET.
The security consultant Kevin Mitnick describes another technique that could allow someone to access your voicemail if they knew your phone number.
Caller ID spoofing allows anyone with a modicum of technical know-how to get access to your voicemail by convincing the system that it's you calling.
According to CNET, the technique has been used in the past to hack celebrities' messages. But rest easy - both O2 and Vodafone told me their systems were designed to make this technique impossible in the UK.

News of the World staff offered 'enhanced redundancy'

 

Around 200 staff were left without a job when the News of the World closed last month

Former News of the World staff are being offered "enhanced redundancy terms" if they leave before the end of the current 90-day consultation period.

The terms include a 25% increase on redundancy pay, gardening leave pay until 6 October, and a 2-3% pay rise.
News International Staff Association told its members it was "a significant improvement on the original offer".
The company had previously said the consultation aimed to redeploy some of the 200 or so staff to other titles.
However, some employees have criticised the redeployment positions as being non-editorial or involving a move abroad.
The current 90-day consultation period is the minimum statutory obligation for an employer making more than 100 employees redundant.
In an email, the staff association said it had reached an agreement with management whereby employees would now be entitled to a 25% increase on redundancy pay or £5,000 - whichever is greater.
Pay rise and bonus All employees would also be "uprated", giving "a rating of 4 for every member of staff, which means a 2.5% pay rise plus a £1,000 bonus."
It also said: "Staff who have a recorded rating of 5 will get 3% pay rise and £1,400 bonus."
NoW staff are being spoken to individually about their future and last month Rebekah Brooks - the former head of News International - told the culture, media and sport select committee that it would try to redeploy every employee.
"We have endeavoured to find them jobs - every single one of them will be offered a job," she said.
The News of the World published its last edition on 10 July in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.
Rumours have circulated that News International will launch another Sunday tabloid, dubbed the Sun on Sunday, but News International chairman Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch, his deputy chief operating officer, have said there are "no immediate plans".

Phone hacking: NoW's Greg Miskiw released on bail

News International offices in Wapping.

Greg Miskiw, the former News of the World newsdesk executive arrested on Wednesday, has been released on bail.
Miskiw, 61, was arrested by appointment at a central London police station as part of the Scotland Yard investigation into phone hacking at the News International tabloid.
The former assistant editor (news) was on Thursday released on bail until October. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "At approximately midday on Wednesday August 10, a 61-year-old man was arrested by appointment at a London police station by officers from Operation Weeting.
"He was arrested on suspicion of unlawful interception of communications, contrary to Section1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977 and on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977.
"He has subsequently been released on bail to a date in October pending further inquiries."
Miskiw, who worked under the former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks and her successor Andy Coulson, became the 12th person to be arrested by Operation Weeting officers.
Miskiw held a senior editorial role at the now-defunct Sunday tabloid until 2005, when he joined a news agency in Manchester before moving to Florida. He told reporters last month that he was returning to the UK to meet police officers.
His arrest came just a week after that of Stuart Kuttner, the long-serving News of the World managing editor who was also later released on bail.
Rupert Murdoch on Wednesday vowed to do "whatever is necessary" to prevent a repeat of the phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed his UK publishing empire when News International's parent company News Corporation unveiled its annual results in New York.

Inside the Murdoch empire

Continue reading the main story

Claims that a private investigator working for the News of the World hacked into the phone of Milly Dowler thrust the newspaper's owners, News International, directly into the spotlight.

The allegations relating to the murdered schoolgirl's messages, combined with the police announcement that there may have been up to 4,000 phone hacking victims, led to the decision by News International Chairman James Murdoch to close the newspaper.
But how big is the News of the World's parent company, News International, and how does it relate to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation?
News International is the UK arm of Mr Murdoch's global News Corp empire and publishes four British newspapers: the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, as well as the weekly Times Literary Supplement. Until 15 July 2011, the chief executive of News International was Rebekah Brooks - a former editor of the News of the World.

News Corp's famous brands

TV: Fox TV, Fox News, National Geographic Channels (share), Star channels, Sky Italia, British Sky Broadcasting (39%)
Newspapers: Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, New York Post, Times, Sunday Times, Sun, News of the World, Herald Sun (Australia), the Australian
Publishing: HarperCollins

But although the four publications form a large chunk of the UK newspaper market, they actually make up just a small part of the global Murdoch empire.

With an annual revenue of $31bn (£19bn) and assets totalling $60bn, Mr Murdoch's network of businesses form one of the world's largest media conglomerates. News Corp spans the US, Europe, Australia, Asia and Latin America and owns subsidiaries in film, television, satellite and cable services and publishing.
Within its global newspapers and information services group - which pulled in revenue of $6.1bn up to June 2010 - News International actually made a loss of $126m.
Among the dozens of media brands owned by News Corp are movie studio 20th Century Fox, Fox TV - including American Idol - and the Asian Star channels. It has the titles the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and 146 newspapers in Australia, and it also owns HarperCollins book publishers.
In addition, it has large shares in the National Geographic Channel and British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB). The latter is currently the subject of an official consultation, due to end this week, into whether News Corp should be permitted to buy the 61% of the business it does not already own.
Earlier advice from the Office of Fair Trading and media regulator Ofcom expressed concern about the move over fears News Corp would own too much of the British media.
According to Ofcom, News Corp's UK newspapers under the News International parent company reach 14.5 million people per week - almost double the number reached by the Daily Mail & General Trust group. BSkyB's Sky TV and radio services reach another 45 million.

The spin-off of Sky News as an independent company has now been made a key condition of News Corp being allowed to take full ownership of BSkyB.

Heather Mills 'told she was phone-hacking target'

Heather Mills has alleged that a senior Mirror Group journalist admitted hacking voicemails left for her by her then-boyfriend Sir Paul McCartney.

Ms Mills told BBC Newsnight that after Sir Paul left the voicemail in 2001, the journalist rang her quoting parts of the recording.
When challenged about how they knew what had been said, Ms Mills said they admitted the message had been hacked.
Parent group Trinity Mirror says all its journalists work within the law.
Mirror Group Newspapers is part of Trinity Mirror plc, which publishes over 260 titles including the Daily and Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and People.
Trinity Mirror responded to the allegation by saying: "Our position is clear. All our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] code of conduct."
Ms Mills told Newsnight that in early 2001 she had had a row with former Beatle Sir Paul, who later left a conciliatory message on her voicemail while she was away in India.
According to Ms Mills, afterwards a senior Mirror Group Newspapers journalist rang her and "started quoting verbatim the messages from my machine".
Ms Mills said she challenged the journalist saying: "You've obviously hacked my phone and if you do anything with this story... I'll go to the police."
She said they responded: "OK, OK, yeah we did hear it on your voice messages, I won't run it."
The journalist whom Ms Mills said contacted her is not CNN presenter Piers Morgan, who was the editor of the Daily Mirror at the time.

 

Heather Mills was married to Sir Paul McCartney from 2002 to 2008

 

However, the message in question appears to be the same as one which Mr Morgan later admitted to having listened to.
In a 2006 article in the Daily Mail, Mr Morgan referred to having heard a recorded message which Sir Paul had left for Ms Mills.
"At one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone," he wrote.
"It was heartbreaking," Mr Morgan wrote. "The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answer phone."
Drugs test If Ms Mills' recollection is correct, the call Mr Morgan listened to had been hacked, and a fellow Mirror Group Newspapers journalist had tried to use it to get a story.
Ms Mills says: "There was absolutely no honest way that Piers Morgan could have obtained that tape that he has so proudly bragged about unless they had gone into my voice messages."
Mr Morgan, the Mirror's editor between 1995 and 2004, has consistently denied sanctioning any phone hacking.
In a statement issued through CNN on Wednesday, Mr Morgan said: "Heather Mills has made unsubstantiated claims about a conversation she may or may not have had with a senior executive from a Trinity Mirror newspaper in 2001.
"I have no knowledge of any conversation any executive from other newspapers at Trinity Mirror may or may not have had with Heather Mills.
"To reiterate, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone."
Newsnight has also learned that many other prominent people, including footballer Rio Ferdinand and TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson, also believe they were hacked by the Mirror group.
The programme understands that Manchester United and England defender Mr Ferdinand believes an article in 2003 in the Sunday Mirror about his missed drugs test, which appears to be based on text and voicemail details, involved the hacking of his messages.
And Ms Jonsson has also been told that she was hacked by the Daily Mirror as well as the News of the World in connection with her affair with then England football manager Sven Goran Eriksson in 2002.
Earlier, a former business journalist at the Daily Mirror alleged phone hacking was an accepted technique for getting stories, at the time Ms Mills says her phone was hacked.
The allegations made by James Hipwell, who has served time in prison for writing about companies whose shares he owned, were dismissed by a Trinity Mirror spokesman as "totally unsubstantiated".
Editorial review So far, most of the revelations surrounding phone hacking have centred on the News of the World, which was published by News Group Newspapers until the paper's closure last month.
News Group is part of News International, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
Earlier this year, the NoW admitted intercepting voicemails, amid intense pressure from those who believed they had been victims.
Among them were celebrities, politicians and victims of crime.
In the following months, the NoW was shut down, a number of its former journalists and editors were arrested and News International executives were asked by MPs to explain themselves.
The prime minister also launched a judge-led inquiry into phone hacking and the ethics of the press.
Last week, amid the latest developments, Trinity Mirror announced it was to review its editorial "controls and procedures".
The company said this was being conducted in light of the current environment rather than because of a specific allegation.