Brooks a 'complete fool' if she did not realise payments were for public official

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/08/brooks-complete-fool-phone-hacking

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Rebekah Brooks will have to be deemed by the jury to have been a "complete fool" not to have known requests for payments for a reporter's "number one military contact" was a public official, it was claimed at the phone-hacking trial.

Brooks has been charged with approving illegal cash payments when she was editor of the Sun to the reporter's source, who was described in emails as his "number one military contact" or "ace military contact".

Prosecutor Andrew Edis QC, told the jury at the Old Bailey that "in order to be acquitted of this count" Brooks is going to have to have been "in a state of mind, that she may have been a complete fool". "But", Edis added, "she isn't, is she?"

Brooks has been charged with conspiring to commit misconduct in public office. She has pleaded not guilty, denying that she ever knew the identity of the source, who was a ministry of defence official. She has also claimed that the phrase could have referred to any number of sources who were not public officials.

The source of stories about the army and navy stories, including one revealing Prince William's former Sandhurst commander being killed in Afghanistan, was paid £80,000 over a five-year period by the Sun.

In his closing speech, Edis told jurors of Brooks: "Ultimately her case here has to be it never occurred to me that this person might be a public official.

"Well what sort of an idiot would you have to be in that state of mind over that period of time," he said.

The barrister claimed that Brooks had to deny knowledge, because if she did know the source was a public official, she would have had to investigate because "that would be her job" as editor of the paper.

Edis said that even if the reporter was being "secretive" about the source and didn't give his boss "a straight answer to a straight question", she would have been able to find out the source's name. This was because sources would have to provide identification for Thomas Cook through which the Sun had a system of paying cash.

Brooks was "not naive", Edis said. He challenged "her suggestion that there has to be an overriding public interest in the story before it is right to pay a public official".

"I'm not saying it is wrong, but it is a slightly odd thing for a person to say in a criminal trial," Edis said.

The trial continues