Phone-hacking jury told to consider ‘office cat knew’ claim with care

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/09/phone-hacking-jury-dan-evans-justice-saunders

Version 0 of 1.

A former News of the World reporter’s claim that phone hacking was so widspread that even “the office cat knew” about it must be considered “with care” by the jury, the Old Bailey has heard.

Former features writer Dan Evans has pleaded guilty to hacking and the judge reminded the jury that he had tried to cut an immunity deal with the crown prosecution.

He told the trial in January that most people at the News of the World knew it was happening.

Mr Justice Saunders told jurors: “You will have to consider his evidence with care.

“He himself has committed criminal offences, and wanted to get any sentence reduced by providing evidence against others.”

He had claimed to have played the former editor Andy Coulson a tape of a voicemail message left by Bond star Daniel Craig on Sienna Miller’s phone.

But counsel for former editor Andy Coulson, who was implicated by Evans’ evidence, said he was at the Labour party conference at the time and claimed the reporter was not telling the truth.

Saunders, summing up the case, told the jury: “The defence response was ‘where is the office cat?’.

“Why haven’t people working at the News of the World, except for him and Clive Goodman, who are people charged with offences, come forward to tell what they knew about phone hacking.

“Are there a lot of people out there who knew about it and haven’t come forward to give evidence, and does that show Mr Evans was exaggerating about what was going on?” said Saunders.

Evans told the court that hacking was a “standard tool” for tabloid journalists, and had been openly discussed in the newsroom.

“Mr Evans said messing about with voicemails was a standard tool in journalism,” said the judge.

“Mr Evans said he did a lot of phone hacking at the News of the World, not as much as at the Sunday Mirror, but he estimates around 1000 phone hacks between January 2005 and August 2006.”

The court has heard Evans tried to broker a full immunity deal in exchange for his testimony, and is still expecting a reduced sentence for helping the prosecution.

However, this has led to him being accused of expanding his evidence to implicate senior figures such as Coulson despite them not actually being involved in hacking.

The summing up resumed today after a break of a day and half for a juror to recover from a migraine.

The judge went through evidence of David Blunkett’s lover Kimberly Quinn being hacked by the News of the World to expose the affair.

He said jurors must decide whether Coulson lied to the home secretary when confronting him about the affair in August 2004.

During his evidence, Coulson conceded that his claim that newspaper sources had confirmed the affair was not true. The conversation was taped and played to the trial.

“He [Coulson] did agree when pressed that he was telling deliberate untruths to Mr Blunkett in the course of the conversation”, Saunders said.

The judge said the jury would have to decide whether Coulson’s admission of “deliberate untruths” was the same as lying to Mr Blunkett.

“Was he trying to get out of having to admit he had lied to the home secretary?” asked Saunders.

The story that was published was a “salacious” tale about the affair, that did not include claims that the home secretary had been distracted from his job and leaking sensitive security details.

These were the public interest justifications Coulson said had convinced him to run the story, even though he knew it had come from hacking.

“He accepts that none of the basis for publishing he said justified his claim [that] publication was in the public interest appeared in the paper’, said the judge.

“The very justification for being persuaded to run the story by Neville Thurlbeck [then NoW’s chief reporter], that the public had a right to know that their home secretary was having an affair with someone to whom he was disclosing secret information, was not revealed,” said Saunders.

“Mr Coulson accepted that was a mistake, in agreeing to publish the article.”

The judge said Coulson said he removed the public interest angle to avoid making the article “hard-hitting” and possibly forcing Mr Blunkett to resign.

“The truth, say the prosecution, is Andy Coulson was well aware phone hacking was going on,” Saunders said.

“He said he didn’t ask Neville Thurlbeck how he had done it, and didn’t take specific steps to ensure no one else was phone hacking.

“He said it simply didn’t occur to him that they were, and he thought Neville Thurlbeck was a one-off. He said he does wish he had taken more positive steps about it when he knew about Neville Thurlbeck’s hacking.”

Coulson has said this was the only time that he was aware of any voicemail interception.

“Mr Coulson accepted he did not ask enough questions of Neville Thurlbeck at the time, and he made a bad mistake in not doing so,” he said.

“He accepts as of 21 July, 2004, it didn’t matter enough for him to do anything about it then.”

The trial continues.