Why the Mirror Group find it Hard to Investigate the Dark Arts and the Daniel Morgan Murder

It’s not widely realised that the first big investigation into corrupt private investigators, police officers and the press, was Operation Nigeria (which morphed into Operation Two Bridges) in 1999, seven years before the first phone hacking inquiry. That investigation specifically looked at two senior named News of the World Journalists.

But as Paddy French, who has indefatigably stood up details from this era in his Press Gang site reports today, it  wasn’t just the News of the World which was compromised by the ‘No 1 Corrupt Detectives Agency’. The Mirror Group were involved as well. This partly explains why – as Alastair Morgan was told by a Mirror journalist very recently – the story of his brother’s murder is ‘too political’ for the Mirror Group to cover.

Below are three extracts from Paddy French’s important second chapter on the murder. Please visit his site and real the whole in in full at  ROGUE JOURNALISTS & BENT COPPERS | PRESS GANG.

Beyond Contempt Reprint: with new Martin Rowson Cover

 

Some news from my Publisher, Martin Hickman at Canbury Press; Peter’s book. We did it!.

Some splendid news about Peter Jukes‘ gripping account of the phone hacking trial: we’ve taken delivery of a reprint.

When we published Beyond Contempt in the autumn, it was frankly a little risky – legally and commercially. Thankfully, hundreds of you who followed Peter’s tweets responded positively. Waterstones has been great too.

So, what’s new in the new edition? Well, we’ve torn through the book and had the text professionally typeset, redesigned the pages, and hunted down a few more typos and blitherings.

A little mischievously, we’ve also commissioned an illustration by Martin Rowson of Rebekah Brooks as Justice. It’s on the cover (right).

Get you copy from www.hackingtrial.com

1987: within months of Daniel Morgan’s Murder, a police Suicide

 

 From the blog of Neil Chenoweth, who has done more than most to track News Corp’s PayTV career. At the end of this blog about Ray Adams, former Met commander and deputy head of NDS security (reporting direct to Murdoch himself), Chenoweth sketches out an interesting timeline around the murder of Daniel Morgan (alleged to be about police corruption) and the suicide of policeman, Taffy Holmes.

Beneath the Molehill: Dennis Rice, Guido Fawkes, the new Press Regulator IPSO

Despite popular demand to publish  it gives me no pleasure to rehearse this sorry and rather sordid tale of tabloid trolling that arose in the background of my hacking trial coverage. I devoted a few paragraphs about this in my book, not because it had any huge public interest, but because it was indicative of the kind of abuses certain members of the British press routinely resort to.

However, two of those responsible for running interference throughout my coverage of the trial, Paul Staines of the Guido Fawkes blog, and Dennis Rice, former journo with the Mail on Sunday and News of the World,  have decided to turn the molehill of a minor and ‘not egregious’ press correction into a full post on the Guido Fawkes blog. Richard Bartholomew has already dissected most of the misrepresentations in a blog I’ve cross posted here. But there are additional details about Dennis Rice, Guido Fawkes and IPSO which are of public interest.

The whole saga is a small but instructive example of the way the so called avatars of the ‘free press’ are willing to use any means at their disposal – investigatory, regulatory, and threats of civil and criminal legal action – to attempt to silence those who expose their abuses.

For the last reason more than anything I’m prepared to wade through the sticky stuff again.

Barthsnotes | Peter Jukes Describes His Experiences with TabloidTroll

“So I’m now going to blog about @peterjukes & his family,” wrote Dennis Rice…

TabloidTroll wrote: “If @PeterJukes writes any shit on me in his book the gloves will really come off. Newsnight ex wife, business failures.” The fact the mother of my two children had been made a target was pretty disturbing.

UPDATE (January 2015): Peter Jukes’ book was originally published as a PDF in August 2014; it was subsequently revised and expanded for the print edition, which appeared in September. This blog entry has been updated to include extra material contained in the revised version, and to provide details of Rice’s complaint to IPSO.
Sections
Introduction
Dennis Rice as hacking victim
Dennis Rice turns on Peter Jukes
Peter Jukes “investigated”
Appendix 1: The anonymous texts
Appendix 2: Press Gazette and IPSO
Appendix 3: Is Rice TabloidTroll?
Appendix 4: Rice calls in the Police

Mazher Mahmood told Met Investigation back in 2005 his informants included “senior officers” and “bent police officers”

A small but telling detail about the proximity of News of the World’s star reporter Mazher Mahmood to the Metropolitan Police.

Over on Bellingcat, Joe Public has noticed that senior Met Officers never even asked about the provenance of the gun used in the Beckham Kidnap fiasco – which saw five people jailed on remand for months. A complaint about this led to Operation Canopus – into the Fake Sheik‘s activities 

 Then, on October 17th 2005 the Guardian ran a Roy Greenslade piece under the headline; “Police probe News of the World stories” – it was a report into the existence of Operation Canopus Two. For the first time a police investigation into Mahmood was out in the open.

But this investigation into Mahmood in 2005 apparently exonerated him, even though he told them:

“I’ve got bent police officers that are witnesses, that are informants.”

via bellingcat – Did Scotland Yard Cover-Up Beckham Kidnap Evidence So The Fake Sheikh Could Be Their Star Witness?.

Earlier during that interview on  26 October 2005 Mazher Mahmood also told investigators from Operation Canopus.

“I’ve got some senior officers in Britain who are also my informants”

This is a full SIX YEARS before the police launch Operation Elveden, into corrupt payments paid to police by News International journalists. Why the delay? And how can we trust the Fake Sheikh’s activities can be fully and appropriately investigated by the same police force he worked so closely with?

In his own words, some were bent. And he was also in contact with senior officers – probably way above the pay grade of those investigating him.

In his autobiography Mahmood boasts of meeting the former Met Commissioner Lord Stevens for drinks, with his then boss Andy Coulson. As the Press Gang notes this was in 2003.

It was shortly after the Crown Prosecution Service decision to abandon charges in the Beckham kidnap affair because one of Mahmood’s informants was considered an unreliable witness …

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2014 in Review: Guess the most popular pieces on my hacking trial blog

Was it key pieces of evidence from the Hacking Trial? The revealing messages between Tony Blair and Rebekah Brooks? Or the electrifying evidence of former News of the World reporter and supergrass/whistleblower Dan Evans? Or was it the near disastrous intervention of David Cameron over the partial verdicts on his former head of communications Andy Coulson.

No. The two most popular posts were…. wait for the fireworks….