Phone Hacking at the Mirror in 1998: Read Paddy French’s Scoop and Pre-buy his Piers Morgan Biography


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Over at Byline, veteran investigative reporter Paddy French has an exclusive which concludes the Mirror Group, and by implication Piers Morgan, knew about phone hacking well before it became standard practice by Glenn Mulcaire at News of the World.  Below is just an excerpt from the full damning in depth piece.

But this is just a taster. Paddy is pitching on Byline a full unauthorised biography of Piers Morgan:

Morgan is one of the most important members of the cast of the phone hacking scandal. He was the first of a long line of Murdoch editors forged in the crucible of the Sun’s show business column “Bizarre”. One of his proteges was Andy Coulson.

Morgan was singled out by Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie as a future editor and it was his patronage that led to his appointment as News of the World editor at the age of 29. There Morgan singled out a young reporter and promoted her to Features Editor: her name was Rebekah Brooks. Morgan was destined to edit the Sun but when Daily Mirror boss David Montgomery — a former News of the World editor — offered him the editorship of the Mirror, Morgan accepted.

By 2003, the troika of Morgan (Mirror), Coulson (News of the World) and Brooks (The Sun) had an iron grip on Britain’s tabloids. Morgan was at the Mirror for nearly ten years — a decade that saw the paper embrace the “dark arts” of illegal news-gathering.

The plan is to produce a readable, balanced picture of a talented but flawed individual.

I’m a retired television producer so I don’t need to be paid for my time.

But researching, writing and publishing a book as ambitious as this one does not come cheap, especially since it needs to be read for libel.

I hope you will support the venture.

For a taster of the article, more below

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….

Mulcaire, Miskiw, Mahmood and the Special Investigations Unit set up by Rebekah Brooks at News of the World


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Before Panorama airs at 7.30 tonight, after two delays, it might be worth looking at the background of MazHer Mahmood, aka the Fake Sheikh, at News of the World under the editorship of Rebekah Brooks, from early 2000 to early 2003.

Mahmood’s activities in the decade leading up to this have been covered in  a previous post about his connections with Southern Investigations. But the problems with that notorious private investigations firm, due to police inquiries and arrests of key personnel around this time, may explain what happened next.

Investigations were taken in house.

One of the first things Brooks did as editor of Britain’s best selling paper was to recall Greg Miskiw from New York, where he had set up office, and form an Investigations Team that worked outside both the Features and News Desk. From various bits of evidence show the floating membership from 2000 onwards to consist of:

Greg Miskiw – head

Neville Thurlbeck – reporter

Sarah Arnold – reporter

Paul McMullan – reporter

Glenn Mulcaire (as reported by Geoff Sweet in the sports pages)

Mazher Mahmood – undercover reporter

Bradley Page – photographer who replaced his father in law Steve Grayson

Conrad Brown – technical and surveillance

BREAKING: No Further Action against News International Lawyer Tom Crone: NOTW desk editor Edmondson pleads guilty to hacking –


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As reported earlier, Ian Edmondson pleaded guilty to phone hacking in the Old Bailey today, completing the main phase of police operation Weeting with seven convictions for the nine charged with conspiracy to phone hack since 2011. As well as private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, two reporters, four desk editor and the editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, have now been convicted. Rebekah Brooks and former managing editor Stuart Kuttner were acquitted. (The prosecution sentencing note is attached here as a pdf)

Stuart Kuttner’s Emails to Surrey Police over Milly Dowler

Here are copies of the two emails, discussed in evidence today and throughout this week, of former News of the World Managing Editor, Stuart Kuttner, emails to Surrey police in April 2002, following the disappearance the previous month of Milly Dowler.

The first email from Friday 12th of April is from the same day, as other evidence has revealed, five NOTW journalists were sent to Telford thanks to Glenn Mulcaire‘s hacking of Dowler’s voicemail, picking up a (wrong number) message from a recruiting agency about a job at print factory. Kuttner’s editor, Rebekah Brooks, was in Dubai that weekend.

The second email, sent initially on the 19th of April, was resent on the Saturday. In this version Kuttner explicitly acknowledges the previous NOTW story was based on Milly Dowler’s voicemail messages. Kuttner claimed NOTW changed the story to reflect the new information from Surrey Police that the voicemail from the recruiting agency was a ‘hoax’. However, the hoax allegation was contained in the first two editions of the Sunday tabloid. In the third edition, all references to voicemails were removed.

Kuttner’s Notes of Conversation with Goodman Just After his Arrest

As discussed in evidence yesterday and today, the CPS have released a redacted version of Stuart Kuttner‘s contemporaneous notes of his discussion with former NOTW Royal Reporter Clive Goodman, dated 10th August 2006, soon after he was released from his arrest and questioning by police in the initial Operation Caryatid investigation into phone hacking.

This evidence is currently being adduced by Andrew Edis QC, as he cross examines Kuttner in the witness box. The original pages are from the NI archives, where Kuttner explains he filed most his notebooks. The transcript is an agreed document

Some of the Mysteries of Phone Hacking – Unlocked

English: Motorola L71 (China Mobile customised model) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is a guest post by Chris Brace (AKA Mr Ceebs on Twitter) who helped me compile the Leveson Amnesia Appendix to my book, The Fall of the House of Murdoch, and will soon be joining the new Bellingcat site set up by Brown Moses, who has a phenomenal record in documenting both Hackgate and the Syrian civil war. 

Chris is writing in response to new evidence at the Hacking Trial. Rebekah Brooks, in her testimony, expressed astonishment that Glenn Mulcaire had managed to hack her phone (on the orders of another News of the World  journalist the jury have been told) even though she’d changed her default PIN number to a personalised one.

Clive Goodman, the former NOTW Royal Editor, also told the court that Mulcaire provided both personalised PIN numbers and direct dial numbers for voicemails. 

Previous prosecution evidence had shown Mulcaire blagging, using engineering passwords, a reset to default from the customer service lines of mobile phone companies. But how could he get hold of a personalised PIN number?. Goodman claimed he had met a contact of Mulcaire’s from the security services and that they provided key data.

These claims have not been thoroughly tested in evidence in Court 12, and much remains speculation. But Chris has devised a thought experiment about how to get hold of personalised pins.

Glenn Mulcaire has pleaded guilty to further charges of conspiracy to intercept voice-mails. But all the defendants at Court 12 deny all the charges and the trial continues. 

Mulcaire Sanctioned by Spooks: ‘Malign Influence’ of NI Lawyer on Goodman’s Legal Team

L/R: Clive Goodman, David Spens QC, Andy Coulson (image from Daily Mail

As Claire Pollard, who usually storifies my tweets, is away for a couple of days, I am reproducing, with kind permission of Rosie Robertson, today’s entry in her excellent Press Reform blog. I don’t think the evidence today from former NOTW Royal Correspondent Clive Goodman needs much comment

Brooks’ Coulson email exchange on Goodman Mulcaire guilty pleas: “It is all going so well”

The CPS have released copies of the email exchange between Rebekah Brooks (Wade as she was then) and Andy Coulson on the day the guilty pleas by NOTW Royal Reporter, Clive Goodman, and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, were first entered in the original phone hacking trial in 2006.

Transcript of Voicemail Message left on Prince Harry’s Phone

This is a transcript of a voicemail, recovered in 2006 from Clive Goodman‘s premises, allegedly left by Prince William on Prince Harry‘s phone. It is the first proof that senior members of the Royal Family were hacked by Glenn Mulcaire, rather than just their aides as admitted in 2006. The reason this has been shown to a jury is, from the prosecution’s case, to prove that NOTW sourced stories from phone hacking, and this information was shared between other defendants. All of the defendants deny all the charges and the trial continues