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)

UNREDACTED: Farrer’s Advice to News International – the Surveillance of Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris

I held this back during the hacking trial for obvious reasons, but am publishing this now. Since Ian Edmondson has pleaded guilty to phone hacking, and the CPS has decided ‘no further action’ against Tom Crone, I can also unredact their names: IE were the initials next to SK in the first transcript: the second is transcript of a conversation between Julian Pike and Tom Crone.

The email release from the CPS of a legal note from Julian Pike, from Farrer’s and Co, briefing Rebekah Brooks and Colin Myler about the state of play in the civil phone hacking cases in January 2010, has caused me to revisit some of the other evidence of Julian Pike, both to the Leveson Inquiry and a parliamentary Home Affairs select committee, about this crucial phase in the legal timeline

Though Pike is not the subject of any know police inquiry, and any other sensitive names have been redacted, I’m still password protecting this post: any public links to previous Parliamentary or Leveson evidence could be deemed prejudicial

This brief timeline begins a year  after the sentencing of Mulcaire and Goodman in January 2007.   Colin Myler has taken over from Andy Coulson after his resignation, and Les Hinton leaving his job as CEO of News International to take of the job of Dow Jones publisher in NYC. But Clive Goodman is still pursuing a wrongful dismissal claim.  A note Pike made of phone call with Myler on 27 May 2008 was adduced by the Leveson inquiry:

Andy Coulson given sight of the 2,000 page Goodman Case in 2006

An email exchange from Monday (26th) which has been released by the crown prosecution service, which shows an exchange between Clive Goodman‘s solicitor, Henri Brandman (mentioned in the transcript of a phone call around the same time), Tom Crone New International’s legal director, and the then News of the World editor, Andy Coulson

Tom Crone’s email to Andy Coulson: Andy Coulson’s emails to NOTW Staff

Released in court was an email (provided by News Corp’s Management and Standards Committee) from in-house News International Lawyer Tom Crone dated September 15th 2006 apparently relaying information Rebekah Brooks had obtained from police officers in regard to the first arrests of Glenn Mulcaire and Clive Goodman.