Phone-hacking trial: 'Nothing dodgy' about cash payments, Brooks tells court

Former Sun and News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks took to the stand today for her eleventh day of evidence on charges of conspiracy to illegally intercept communications, commit misconduct in a public office and pervert the course of justice. Andrew Edis QC, the lead Crown prosecutor, began by asking the defendant if she had read newspaper articles in the late 1990s that discussed journalists hacking into people's voicemail. Brooks said she did recall publicity over the issue of phone companies having "factory default settings".

Edis then moved on to a 2001 investigation by the News of the World into Sophie Wessex and asked Brooks if she was personally involved with it. The defendant said the origin of the story was a "disgruntled employee" who had contacted the paper via publicist Max Clifford and agreed she was "closely involved throughout" the story being published. The Crown barrister showed the court a note from convicted phone hacker Glenn Mulcaire which contains the name and details of Sophie Wessex. Brooks said she could not think of any reason why Mulcaire might have been involved but told the court the journalist involved "ran his own investigations" so she had no direct knowledge of why Mulcaire might have been involved.

The Crown QC then continued where he ended last Thursday by questioning the defendant about charge five, allegations that she agreed to corrupt payments for public officials. He asked her about her answer last week to a question where Brooks said the paper "rarely paid police officers for stories". The defendant said there may have been occasions that a serving police officer was "paid for gossip he did not get in the line of his duties". Edis asked for an example of this but the defendant could not recall a specific instance.

The barrister suggested to the witness that this was an "invented hypothesis" because of the emails she had already been shown. "When you asked me last week I just wanted to make sure I was absolutely accurate." Edis replied: "Anything might have happened. What we are interested in is what happened." The defendant responded by saying "it's very difficult for me to give you an example" adding that there was a distinction between a police officer giving the paper information they had came across in the course of their duties and stories about, for example "what their neighbours are up to."

Brooks continued that she would only authorise a payment to a public official if it was clearly in the public interest "like in the Stephen Lawrence case recently". Edis asked if there was a written rule about this anywhere, to which the defendant replied: "It was a general rule, it's the law of the land and I can't believe there was one journalist in Fleet Street who did not understand that. It was taught at journalism college."

The judge, Mr Saunders, then intervened and asked about the procedures at the paper if a journalist wanted to pay public officials or otherwise break the law. The witness confirmed that it should need the authority of the editor of the day for this to happen.

Edis then had an email displayed on the court screens where a journalist asks Brooks for a £1000 payment to a serving police officer for a story about a mayor and "wife swapping". "There is no mention of the public interest," the barrister suggested. Brooks said she did not remember the story or getting the email. The former editor told the court that "due to the speed of the business" journalists would often enter agreements first and seek authorisation later - "the story was on page 33, so it was very much the back of the book." A further email request for payment for a picture of a military officer who had killed a police officer in a traffic accident was then shown to the court. "What was the public interest in that," Edis asked. "I would need to have all of the information to answer that," the defendant replied. The prosecution QC put it to the witness that "in none of these emails does anyone mention the public interest, it's almost as if they don't know that is the basis of how you are making the decision". "Senior reporters would know it was," Brooks replied. Edis asked if Brooks would have "made it her business" to find out if a payment was being made to a public official before money changed hands. "I wouldn't have assumed it was a public official," the defendant replied. "It could have been the bus driver or the cleaner," she suggested.

The prosecution then moved on to another email from a journalist asking Brooks for a £4000 payment for a picture of Prince William "in a bikini" to be sourced from an "instructor at Sandhurst" who was "William's direct platoon commander". Brooks emails back "OK." The defendant explained that she assumed that the mention of a "party" meant a public event, and on the day concerned she was very busy as there was a "huge England world cup game" and her first thought would be to "get the picture in", adding: "I would never have thought in a million years this was from William's platoon commander." Edis asked if in this case "you snap into action to find out if it is a public official?" Brooks replied: "It was a big public party, anyone could have taken the photo." "I'm more concerned with who was getting the money," the prosecution barrister responded. Edis asked if Brooks had given this explanation to the police when asked about it, and pointed out that the defendant had a "policy of not giving answers to the police whenever she was interviewed". The defendant said that she took legal advice not to answer questions.

The jury was then shown another email, in which a journalist is passing on information about Prince Harry in Afghanistan quoting a source "serving beside him". The prosecution asked Brooks if she had made any inquiries about who this source might be. The defendant replied that she did "see anything unusual or wrong in this email, but I may well have done." adding that the paper had many military contacts and was receiving information from many different ones. Another email from a journalist to Brooks quotes "my man at 5" which the witness agreed meant MI5, part of the British security services. The former editor said she and her staff were often briefed by MI5 "if they could steer us in the right direction if they could". Edis responded: "So you thought it was the press officer, everyone's man at 5" and went on "did you care about how your journalists dealt with public officials?" "Yes I did," Brooks replied to which Edis responded "did you care enough to ask them?"

The witness was then handed a new bundle of documents - a large A3 folder that contained an 11 page list of payments for Sun newspaper stories starting with one called "Army bonking in the Congo". Brooks was asked about what rules over cash payments were in place while she edited the Sun. The defendant replied that any cash payment had to be authorised by the department heads and the editor of the day. The same applied to cash transfers via Thomas Cook over a certain limit. Edis asked what the limit was, and Brooks she could not recall exactly, adding: "As a general principle, journalists paying sources in cash is not an indication of criminality."

The defendant said that often the worry was "someone they live with might see they were getting money from the Sun". "In the case of someone working at Sandhurst the point might be a worry that the army might look at their bank account at some point in the future." Brooks replied: "Someone asking a cash payment didn't make me think gosh what's going on, cash payments don't always indicate criminality." "But they can," Edis responded, and asked if was the editor's role to check on this. Brooks agreed and argued that there was a huge "tightening up" of procedures while she was editing the Sun and that from her £58m budget the percentage of cash payments was very low. "So you could have managed them, it wouldn't have taken much time," the prosecution QC suggested. "Cash payments don't mean something dodgy was going on," Brooks continued to insist.

The prosecution barrister asked the witness how often she edited the Sun and how often her deputy did. Brooks confirmed she did not usually edit Monday's paper, as this was done on a rota basis, and that "there were many other issues I had to deal with, my role as an editor was not just to sit at that desk". Edis suggested that even given that it was still the editor's responsibility to deal with journalistic ethics and, as the MOD source was giving stories to the paper for five years, there was "plenty of time to ask who it was". Brooks replied that it was "against newsroom culture" to ask about a confidential source. Edis pointed out that stories from the source "came from all over the world and usually concern military discipline or misconduct". Jonathan Laidlaw, QC for Brooks, then objected to the line of questioning as his client had so far only been asked to look at stories she herself had authorised. Edis moved on and said "the stories all have one other characteristic, they were all true and were confirmed by the ministry of defence" adding "that doesn't sound like they come from a man in a pub in Aldershot". Brooks replied that the reporter was "very well connected" and could speak to anyone in the military. "Your newspaper paid over £80,000 to this source, did you know that?" The defendant replied that she just saw the reporter's name, recalled the big stories he had broken and authorised the money. "I just didn't assume he was paying a public official," Brooks told the jury.

Brooks was then asked about her payment to a public official for a story that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain was planning to smuggle anthrax into the UK via duty free perfume bottles. The defendant told the court they agreed to pay the source before a meeting she attended at Downing Street with MI5, GCHQ, and government ministers that broadly confirmed the story. The witness said this was true but that the story was clearly in the public interest.

Judge Saunders asked the witness that while he understood she could not ask who the source was could she not ask the general category, Brooks said she trusted the journalist and never asked. "You trusted Clive Goodman and look what happened there," the judge replied, which led to objections from both Goodman and Brooks' barristers.

Court then adjourned for half an hour.