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Ian Edmondson Phone-Hacking Trial Glenn Mulcaire

Phone-hacking trial: The night lawyer, the private eye and the emails

By James Doleman |

November 20, 2013 | 9 min read

When the trial resumed, the prosecution recalled James Morgan to the stand for a brief re-examination. Mr Bryant-Heron had the list of payments made by the News of the World (NotW) to convicted phone hacker Glenn Mulcaire displayed on the court’s screens. Morgan told the court that overall authority to make these payments came from Stuart Kuttner, the paper’s managing editor. The witness was then allowed to step down.

Old Bailey: Ian Edmondson is one of the defendants

The next person called to the stand was Barney Monaghan. The witness told the court he was a solicitor who carried out work for the NotW as a legal adviser from 2003 until 2010 on a freelance basis. Monaghan told the court that he was a 'night lawyer' who read over stories to check for any libel or privacy issues that may arise. My Bryant-Heron asked the witness about the “Hermes” system, which, Monaghan told the jury allowed him to read potential stories and mark any problems on them for the attention of the sub-editors. Monaghan said he tended to deal with the less contentious stories while the in-house lawyers dealt with the more important ones.

Jonathan Laidlaw QC then cross-examined the witness. He asked Monaghan what questions he asked journalists. Monaghan said he asked “is this true or can you stand it up?” but he would avoid asking for a source as “journalists were protective about those”. Laidlaw put it to the witness that the protection of journalistic sources was written into law and the PCC code and that journalists may have given their informant a promise not to reveal their identity, to which Monaghan agreed. It was also the case that journalists moved jobs and wanted to keep their sources secret so they could keep using them at a new paper.

Laidlaw asked Monaghan if he read every article in the paper, to which the witness replied that that would be impractical, as that would take about “five weeks”.

Timothy Langdale QC, for Mr Coulson, then asked the witness what his view of Tom Crone, the NotW chief lawye, was. Monaghan agreed that he was “the best in the business” and that he commanded respect throughout the industry. Sallie Bennett-Jenkins, for Ian Edmondson, then asked the witness if there were important legal issues such as libel, privacy, and potential injunctions and that the role of the lawyer “cannot be understated”. Monaghan agreed. The witness was then allowed to leave the stand.

The next witness was Andrew Gadd. Gadd told the court that he was an “investigative researcher” and had done freelance work for the NotW from 2004 until 2010. The witness told the court he had worked with convicted phone-hacker Glenn Mulcaire in the 1990s doing “tracing work” - finding out where people lived so they could find out more information on a person. He was only employed by one person at the paper, news editor Ian Edmondson, doing two or three jobs a week. Over this period he invoiced the paper for around £348,000.

The witness was then asked how the process worked. Gadd replied that he would be emailed by Edmondson with the details of whom he wanted traced, and Gadd would then go to work. He had only met Edmondson in person three times, the last occasion for lunch in 2009. During that meeting, Gadd asked Edmondson about phone-hacking, and it appeared to the witness that “he didn't really know a lot about it”.

The prosecution then ended its examination in chief and Edmondson’s QC, Sallie Bennett-Jenkins, then rose to ask the witness what he thought of her client. Gadd told the court that he thought Edmondson was a “decent man” and he liked working for him. Returning to the 2009 meeting, the witness said that Edmondson showed concern for Clive Goodman but said nothing about phone-hacking other than what had already been published in the newspaper.

Asked about his work, Gadd said he traced people through the electoral register, telephone directories, the land registry, asking neighbours, companies house, employers and delivery services. He spoke to “anyone” who could help, including the police who were “sometimes helpful”. Gadd also used databases such as Equifax and 192.com, which are open source databases. Gadd also used Facebook, which he described as “good for pictures”, and Wikipedia, which he said was also “very good”. There is, he told the jury, information on the internet “which people wouldn’t believe”, with the business website Linkedin being “particularly useful”.

Gadd was then asked about specific names of people that appeared in emails between him and Edmondson. The first was Andy Gray, an ex-professional footballer; when he was asked to source a mobile phone number and information on his finances, he was unable to do so. The witness then told the jury he had never heard of the term “blagging” until put to him during this investigation. Further names investigated by Gadd on behalf of the paper were Tracy Temple and Kerry Katona.

Stuart Kuttner’s QC, Jonathan Caplan, then asked the witness what he was primarily involved with. Gadd replied he was “tracing individuals then investigating them”, adding that if he knew someone’s address he could find out who owned the house they lived in and who they cohabited with. “Finding people is the key” Gadd told the jury.

The investigator then confirmed to Caplan that he also did work for legal firms and financial institutions, usually being employed to find out the address of people they wished to locate. The witness was shown a statement he made to police confirming he submitted all his invoices to the NotW for the attention of Ian Edmondson and billed an average, according to Caplan, of around £70,000 a year, not including VAT. Gadd objected to this figure saying that in his view he only earned around £38,000 a year, saying that “£70,000 seemed like a bit more than it was”.

Caplan then read a witness statement from Gadd which said “the money was more than I would get from most clients.. Mr Edmondson never queried the cost”. The witness told the court the NotW would pay for his time, even if he did not manage to find the person he sought. Caplan then asked if the NotW had ever suggested putting the witness on a fixed weekly amount. The witness said no as that would have stopped him working for other clients. Finally, Caplan asked Gadd if his work had fallen off after two reports produced by the information comissioners in 2006, and Gadd said “no”.

Mr Justice Saunders then intervened and asked the witness what the actual requests made to him by Edmondson were. Gadd told the court that sometimes it was to confirm information the paper already had, or filling out gaps in partial information. He might also be asked “who someone was with”.

Saunders asked the witness why he supplied mobile phone numbers, to which Gadd replied that Edmondson “might want to phone them up”. Saunders asked if people like Kerry Katona would not have “agents and suchlike”, Gadd replied if he had the number it would be “churlish not to pass it on”. In his job, he told the judge, he merely provided a “general overview of someone”. The witness was then allowed to leave the stand.

The court was then read a number of statements agreed by all parties from various other NotW staff members. All of the these denied any knowledge of phone-hacking, illegal practices or Glenn Mulcaire, apart from one journalist, Paul Kennedy, who recalled meeting Mulcaire at former NotW news editor Greg Miskiw’s leaving party. Kennedy’s statement added: “It was well known Glenn was providing Greg with very good information, I can’t say more than that as he (Miskiw) was very secretive.”

The prosecution then told the court that there would be no more live evidence today and instead the prosecution would be going over documents. The court then rose for a short break.

Mr Bryant-Heron, for the prosecution, had each member of the jury given a large folder of documents and had detective constable Andrew Ryall called to the stand to authenticate them. The folder consisted of emails, recovered from the management standards committee at News International.

The first section, Bryant-Heron explained, related to Ian Edmondson. The first email shown was from then NotW editor Andy Coulson to all staff congratulating Edmondson for becoming news editor at the paper. The second, from 22 November 2005, was from Edmondson to Glenn Mulcaire with the subject line “can you take a look at this”, and gave the details of two actors from the soap opera Emmerdale - Matt Healey and Emily Simons - suggesting they were “meeting”. The next was from Edmondson to Mulcaire, confirming that he was renewing his contract until 2007.

The next email shown was from Clive Goodman to Ian Edmondson, asking “I thought you were spinning some dark arts on this”. Another email between Goodman and Mulcaire referred to a story about Prince William with the pharse “the story comes from William himself”. Edmondson replied “?”, and Goodman responded “not on email”.

The next document shown to the court was a letter of dismissal relating to Edmondson giving the reason for the ending of his employment as “gross misconduct” for “complicity in the illegal interception of voicemail”. More of Mulcaire’s notes with the word “Ian” on the top right hand corner were then shown to the court.

Justice Saunders then adjourned the court, remarking to the jury “It’s been a tough day, but we’ve all survived”.

The defendants continue to deny the charges, the trial continues.

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Ian Edmondson Phone-Hacking Trial Glenn Mulcaire

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