No Wonder They Hired Andy Coulson
Amid news that News Corp is playing games with its BSkyB bid (and even that Murdoch might sell News International entirely), the Guardian reports that Gordon Brown, like everyone else in England it seems, was hacked by “journalists across News International.”
Journalists from across News International repeatedly targeted the former prime minister Gordon Brown, attempting to access his voicemail and obtaining information from his bank account, his legal file as well as his family’s medical records.
[snip]
Separately, Brown’s tax paperwork was taken from his accountant’s office apparently by hacking into the firm’s computer. This was passed to another newspaper.
Brown was targeted during a period of more than 10 years, both as chancellor of the exchequer and as prime minister. Some of the activity clearly was illegal. Other incidents breached his privacy but not the law.
So here’s a question I’m mystified that no one is asking.
A couple of Liberal Democrats are now reporting that, after having received non-public briefings on Andy Coulson’s role in the hacking scandal, they warned David Cameron not to hire Coulson as his spokesperson. But Cameron ignored those warnings.
The crisis engulfing David Cameron over phone hacking deepened on Saturday as Paddy Ashdown revealed that he had warned No 10 only days after the general election of “terrible damage” to the coalition if he employed Andy Coulson in Downing Street.
The former Liberal Democrat leader, who had been extensively briefed on details that had not been made public for legal reasons, was so convinced that the truth would eventually emerge that he contacted the prime minister’s office.
Ashdown, a key player as the Liberal Democrats agonised over whether to join in a coalition with the Tories, told the Observer that, based on what he had been told, it was obvious Coulson’s appointment as Cameron’s director of communications would be a disaster.
“I warned No 10 within days of the election that they would suffer terrible damage if they did not get rid of Coulson, when these things came out, as it was inevitable they would,” he said.
Isn’t it possible that Cameron insisted on hiring Coulson because of his role in the scandal? That is, is it possible that, either before or after the election, Coulson shared some of this intelligence–which we know included personal information about Gordon Brown–with the Tories for political advantage?
There is no other reason for the hack or the hire. That is the tradecraft of Murdoch and his politics here as well.
Yes.
It’s not only possible, it’s probable. Cameron and the Tories suborned felonies by Murdoch Inc. and Scotland Yard in order to gain power, just like they did under Thatcher. The Tories have deliberately, repeatedly used a criminal syndicate to expand their political empire.
The only real question is why Blair did nothing about it. Did Blair use the same criminal syndicate to force the UK into a criminal war? Is Phone-Hacking-Gate really just a sideshow to a military coup which drove the UK into an illegal war in Iraq?
Testing.
Yep.
A list of the hacked, from the Guardian
Naturally Coulson is on the list himself. The entries are alphabetical by initial letter of identifier; nothing under Q yet. I guess we get that after the matter has been decided.
Also, there’s been a little matter in the Delaware Chancery Court that might bear a glance.
Sorry about that. When I look at my account today, it gives me an identity other than SaltinWound, along with the activity of another user, but then it posted okay.
Uh-oh, SaitinWound, could it be that NoW has hacked FDL?
Marcy, I think a safer assumption is simply that Cameron knew his only route to the PM role was to curry favor with Murdoch personally. And he may well have hired Coulson for that general reason, without thinking in the concrete terms that you suggest.
That said, the more I read about this scandal (and The Guardian is the best source, I think), the more it seems that this government is on the brink of falling and they are now bailing water (with both Cameron and Clegg speaking critically of the BSkyB deal, etc.).
It’s also possible that Murdoch made support for the Tories a quid pro quo on hiring Coulson.
I am not sure why Cameron hired Coulson, but I’m sure the answer to that question will be a key to the rest to this story. Maybe he was just trying to buy some protection from Murdoch. Maybe he wanted somebody as “connected” as Coulson. Any way you slice, it looks to cost Cameron severely. I think he, along with everyone else assumed Murdoch and his cronies were untouchable.
On a side note, I’m wondering what sparked this whole mess off now. The really explosive details have been known to some folks in the UK for years.
What is new is the revelation that hacking was not confined to politicians and sports stars but to a missing little girl (who had been murdered so it turned out) and the families of those killed in the 7/7 bombings. This is by the reporter who broke the story.
Agree.
And the guardian.uk got its final scoops last week it seems.
And the BSkyB deal was in its final phase.
So something about the BSkyB must have triggered other things behind the scenes, I suspect.
That’s what I surmise, too.
The things that are most interesting for U.S. politics in this involve the risk to Murdoch’s man in charge of the Dow Jones Co (Hinton) and the nominal person in charge in UK, Murdoch’s son. If both of those people were taken out in an investigation (possibly in both cases for perjuring themselves or for knowing things that they failed to act on), then who’s left to run the store — on both sides of the Atlantic — for the old man? I’m waiting to see if there are implications for FoxNews.
This Guardian column is suggestive of possible chips to fall: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/10/news-of-the-world-executives
I actually think that it is *potentially* much — and I mean MUCH – bigger than that.
I ‘second’ Wm Ockham’s question about ‘why now’…?
I missed the bit about how the news of Milly Dowling’s phone hacking happened to become public this week; I assume that it the work of Nick Davies and the Guardian. (I think that was the final breach in the wall.)
But I think this is potentially far larger than we can get our heads around.
Consider – Nicholas Shaxson’s superb recent book on tax haven abuses (“Treasure Islands“) points out that News Corp has hundreds of tax subsidiaries, about half of them in the Anglo part of ‘the spider web’ — offshore banking, shadow banking system.
A commenter at Yves’ Smith’s NakedCapitalism over the weekend left a comment to the effect that it was/is ‘rumored’ that a lot of Russian and Arab money goes to News Corp — however, that person left no attribution or links to support that statement. I mention it here in case anyone around here has links… If that is true, then what I find striking is that if I were a Russian oiligarch, or an Arab relying on petroleum and legacy energy systems, News Corp support would be a good way to fund my bullshit, pseudo-science guyz and galz telling the US public that global warming is a ‘hoax’. In other words, via tax havens, I’d easily be able to hide my underwriting of all the global warming denier media bullshit. And Murdock would have made it easy for me.
So I think that this has huge implications for governments on both sides of the pond, for the role of media and the way it will (or won’t) be constrained, for personal (vast) fortunes, for information flows, and for climate and environmental policies on both sides of the pond.
Murdock owning and gelding the WSJ is the least of it.
(And just to add a digression, this has to be good for Pearson, which owns the Financial Times. They’ve been doing some interesting coverage to back up the Guardian.uk’s superb reporting.)
I think this has huge implications for the legitimacy of Cameron’s government, and it would not surprise me if Cameron takes a wobble because of not only hiring Coulson, but his good relationship with Brooks and Murdock.
This appears to be a key moment for Clegg, who seems to be the only guy not chummy with the Murdocks and their little circle.
Observe also that it was Clegg’s said-to-be-mentor, Paddy Ashdown, who came right out and stated that he’d warned Cameron off Coulson. The Lib Dems seem to have somehow evaded Murdock’s control and frankly that appears to be a key advantage.
(FWIW, another juicy bit: Ashdown is known as ‘Paddy Pantsdown’ for past indiscretions, but one now wonders just how did the tabs get the inside info about the dropped pants, eh…?)
But I think this News Corp criminality has potentially a lot of leakage.
Basically, we’ve got:
— The spectre of the cops as a racketeering outfit (as Fractal points out).
— Then add onto that the racketeers are stealing from the national Police Database — so anyone whinging on about Wikileaks has some serious credibility issues after this revelation about the cops using the national database to spy on their own Sec of Exchequer.
— Add on to that the confirmation that Blair was Murdock’s poodle.
— Then add to it all that Cameron appears to be Murdock’s Poodle Of the Moment.
— Add in that Murdock has been a key player in all the global warming denialism that has been spewed on Fox in US, so this is a new glimmer of hope for breaking up the poisonous, lying bastards who are holding us all hostage to Big Oil.
— Add in that if anyone has the cajones to start asking why this bastard Murdock doesn’t pay taxes to support schools, the cops he pays off, the local governments of all the millions who buy his tabloids — the very same Murdock-owned tabs that are bleating what Murdock’s Poodle Cameron was dishing out, “Austerity! Austerity!”…
Climate scientists across the globe should hope like hell that Nick Clegg and Milliband, with a verrrry reluctant Cameron, nail Murdock’s hide politically, legally, and financially.
And the biggest winner here might be… Hugh Grant ;-))
Oh, and the guardian.uk.
And if Clegg plays his cards correctly, the Lib Dems.
And the rest of us, who need the global warming deniers put back in their box and ignored as loons.
Sorry, should have added that Murdock helped Blair screw Brown, it begins to appear. Quite interesting to see this all spilling out.
Also, as someone noted, there’s been a lawsuit now put in Delaware (that little tax haven island in US) against Murdock for nepotism and no end of bad management at News Corp. Nice to see the markets and the attorneys start to wade in.
you
and George Michael:
lead me to The Guardian and Kevin McKenna:
which leads me to youtube:
and others posted by NOTWPhoneHacking (176 videos posted), like:
but the one with the most views is:
(I don’t have TV, so this is news to me)
The most blatant quid for Murdoch’s quo of helping the Tories win the elections would be the payoff to Murdoch Inc. of approving his takeover of British Sky Broadcasting (“BSkyB”). Murdoch needed Coulson on the inside to ensure no obstacles were put in the way of News Corp. buying the 61% of BSkyB it did not already own. If (IF) the BSkyB takeover is in fact killed by the Tories & Lib Dems, Murdoch would have no further incentive to support the coalition govt. What then?
It seems consistent with Murdoch’s criminal business model that he would demand that one of his criminal agents be hired into the top of the new UK govt he helped elect. NoW hired several convicted felons after they were released from multi-year prison sentences and promptly employed them to bribe Scotland Yard and spy on at least one Scotland Yard detective who was investigating one of them [the ex-felons] for murder. Rebekah was notified by Scotland Yard in a face-to-face meeting with that detective and his boss that the Yard knew her NoW spies were surveilling that detective. Another Murdoch paper The Times hired the former Scotland Yard police asshole who covered up the phone hacking in 2006 or 2009 (or both times), who then promptly wrote columns for The Times discounting the scale and criminality of the phone hacking.
It is not subtle or vague: UK public are now convinced Murdoch Inc. and Murdoch and his son James and their precious Rebekah are criminals & thugs. Soon they will realize that the Tories are equally criminal for aiding & abetting Murdoch, hiring his criminal agent as the communications director for the entire Conservative Party in 2007 as it prepared to run against the Labour Party, then hiring his criminal agent to be the PM’s personal communications director at No. 10 Downing Street.
Yeah, but when Fox needed Bush to raise ownership levels here to 39%, he didn’t (AFAIK) do something similar–he just trusted his bought politician (though at that point the GOP did balk for a period).
Maybe that’s why Coulson had to be there–to make his bought politicos behave even better than they otherwise would.
Yes. That’s what I meant.
Could you fill us in on the Fox ownership levels? I don’t remember that.
You’re a little unclear. Do you mean “hire Coulson and Tories get News corp support”?
Maybe I am wrong, but I feel like we have more secrecy here than in England. If things like this are happening over there, what are the chances they are happening here but we do not know? Is there reason to believe the New York Post is clean? The Wall Street Journal. I feel like I did when Iceland failed. Like we are next.
if Public –
* Officers of the Metropolitan Police
* Employees of Scotland Yard
* Officials in the Royal Protection Unit
can be so easily bought off, what hope does our private information have in the hands of private security state contractors?
All three of those are the same people: Scotland Yard is just the popular name (geographic location) for “the Met” which is the Metropolitan Police. The royal protection squad is a squad of the Met.
But however it is named, it is now revealed to be completely corrupt. This is evil of a much more dangerous strain. Corrupt cops with guns & search warrants & wiretaps & Internet sniffers. Selling out the safety of members of the royal family (and their friends & associates!). Failing to investigate egregious invasions of privacy by Murdoch Inc. and probably all the other tabloids not owned by Murdoch Inc. What does a country do when its premier police force is discovered to be a racketeering enterprise?
thx for the correction. i’ll amend my comment to: with the consolidation of the security state under one umbrella, how much more vulnerable we are to bad actors working inside this system.
How about a classic British response: a white paper — to wash everything clean in the end?
First, of course, all the investigating and prosecuting has to go on, and this will take many months.
Second, the white wash. But who will survive the first step? So many people have been compromised for such a long time.
Third, and this may be in reach: the end of the Murdoch criminal empire.
Can this be the end of Little Rico?
George Michael twitter:
(h/t Rosalind @11 :-)
If he didn’t need info Coulson already had, maybe he wanted someone like Coulson who who do this sort of thing for him.
Having someone willing and able to violate other privacy for your cause might come in handy.
Compare, e.g., Dick Cheney’s running the 2000 VP selection process: “Here, Mr. Hopeful. Fill out this long form detailing all the crap in your life so we can be ready for oppo research. Please include all supporting documentation, names, dates and places.”
We’ve still never seen those notebooks, have we?
That’s the utility of having a Coulson on the payroll – you get the information but not the baggage of the objects of the surveillance knowing you have it.
the singer George Michael has some interesting insights on his tweeter feed from his personal experiences with the Murdoch Inc. spy machine (start at 18 hours ago)
(and woo-hoo, numbered comments are back! thx backstage busy bees!)
In addition to following the UK Guardian liveblog, I highly recommend tuning in to the streaming video for “ParliamentLive” (MS Silverlight required). David Miliband the Labour leader hammered the coalition govt’s culture secretary over the BSkyB deal, other Labour members ridiculed the (absent) PM David Cameron. Also would be good practice for following the huge debate & vote scheduled for Wednesday to stop News Corp. entirely from taking over the remainder of BSkyB (and perhaps force it to divest the 39% it owns now).
As of 3:55 pm PST, Financial Times has a front page OpEd that “Murdock’s BSkyB deal is dead in the water”
Delicious!
Here’s hoping ;-)
Looks like I screwed up the link. Let’s try again.
I’d say you’re right, the odds are good that Cameron hired Coulson because he was Karl Rove in spats, because he wasn’t a “prude” about adhering to legal or ethical standards, and because he would fall on his sword for the big guy – if and only if he was taken care of – a kind of end of Godfather Part II deal.
Cameron is defending Coulson despite revelations about the NoW’s illegal behavior during his tenure, in part because that would be the deal, in part because admitting error has been removed from the smart politician’s playbook, except about the least consequential things or only when admitting surprise and stupidity.
Regarding the current press attacks on Gordon Brown, I suspect it is more than the narcissistic Tony Blair getting even with a competitor. After all, Blair overshadowed Brown since university and was his leader for decades in Parliament and government. Brown supplanted Blair as PM only served briefly and has largely left the political stage. Brown is, of course, a complainer in the Murdoch hacking scandal.
More likely, the media campaign involving Blair and is a stalking horse, an example of what could follow for Cameron and others should they become too vigorous in their pursuit of truth, justice and the English way when investigating Rupert the Bold.
Oh, and I suggest that the hacking at NoW was not at all limited to increasing its circulation. That would have been a happy consequence, useful to business analysts and journalists, and to the bonus pool for a handful of NoW managers. Its principal purpose was more likely to have been as marketing research.
That’s not to say that illegal blackmail needed to be their primary goal. Coulson, at least his sponsors, would have been more subtle. As with more obvious lobbying, gaining political approvals for business deals is more lucrative and carries less risk. The BSkyB deal is only one of many; it could make billions directly and amplify an already global media presence. The ability to bend national and multi-national regulatory structures is also significant. That affects many deals and avoids policies that could haunt Murdoch and his businesses. Unlike Obama, Murdoch really does play eleventy-dimensional chess.
Murdoch has also been interested in getting the BBC’s funding cut. And the Cameron/Clegg coalition has indeed cut it quite a bit.
Ding!
As for the referring BSkyB to the regulatory commission, there’s another view that claims that was taken to put this on the shelf while public passions cool down, then grab it off the shelf and approve it at a later, quieter time.
But if that happens, then shame on Labour, Lib Dems, and anyone who wants to avoid a world in which media barons like Murdock pull far too many strings, while being tax avoiders into the bargain.
This description of the NoW’s serial attacks on Gordon Brown is probably typical of a Murdoch assault:
.
The BSkyB deal has been referred to regulators, which is quite a blow.
actor hugh grant turned the tables on one of the tabloid reporters who had hounded him, and wrote it up for an article in the New Statesman.
a fun read.
It’s from April!
(Me: When was that note added? Was there a police investigation in April?)
This part’s for ew:
(me: The Guardian paid?)
(me: is this the death of sovereignty/governance thing again?)
I love a transcript.
So it was Rebekah Brooks who called PM Brown to tell him that the Sun was going to publish the story about his son’s illness. She had to know this information was “dirty.” Off with her head! http://www.newsonnews.net/bbc/9997-bbc-newsnight-rebekah-brooks-complicit-in-gordon-brown-son-story.html
Hugh Grant is witty and adroit.
Rebekah Brooks appears to operate according to the logic of ‘free market’ neofeudalist fundamentalism.
Inhuman.