The Supreme Court has heard that documents relating to former News International executives could be investigated over claims that Rupert Murdoch’s media company falsely implicated Gordon Brown and Tom Watson in a “fake security threat” to “justify” the deletion of millions of emails.
News Group Newspapers (NGN), which publishes the Sun and the defunct News of the World, faces accusations that it concocted a “false narrative” that Labour peer Lord Watson conspired with the former prime minister to obtain the stolen data as part of an attempt to cover up wrongdoing and “subvert” the police investigation into the wiretapping scandal.
Will Lewis, now CEO of The Washington Post, was group general manager of News International at the time of Operation Weeting, the Metropolitan police investigation into phone tapping in 2011.
On Monday Judge Fancourt was told that the minutes of a meeting between detectives and Lewis on July 8, 2011, recorded Lewis saying: “I was alerted by a source that a current member of staff had accessed information. [the News International chief executive] Rebecca’s [Brooks’s] The email was forwarded to Rep. Tom Watson.
“This came to Rebecca. I was asked to meet with the source. I will consult with BCL. [lawyers] “I did not ask if the source’s identity could be revealed. The source repeated the threat. The source then returned and said she was a former member of staff, that the emails had definitely been passed on and were in Gordon Brown’s control. This increased our concerns. We have taken steps to be more specific about her emails.”
NGN denied that the security threat, which allegedly led to the theft of Brooks’ emails in 2011, was engineered as part of a “cover-up”. In written argument, Anthony Hudson KC, for NGN, said the “threat” to Brooks’ data was “believed to be genuine”. He added: “NGN has received information on two occasions that there is a direct threat that a current or former employee is actively seeking to sell data in NGN’s possession”.
“Against this background, NGN has decided to keep multiple copies of sensitive data on various systems to avoid increasing the risk of data loss.”
The judge was told that publishers who initially opposed an investigation into possible links to Mr Lewis and former chairman James Murdoch now agreed.
This was revealed during a High Court preliminary hearing into a lawsuit brought by Mr Watson and former Liberal Democrat business secretary Sir Vince Cable, who claim NGN had targeted them through voicemail interception and the use of private investigators.
In written argument, David Sherborne, for Mr Watson, said the politician had been the target of NGN’s “unlawful conduct” as a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, which was investigating media misconduct.
“Lord Watson was (falsely) cited by senior NGN executives, including Rebecca Brooks and Will Lewis, as part of a ‘false security threat’ that was used to ‘justify’ the erasure of critical backup tapes of NGN’s email system, which, as plaintiffs allege, led to the deletion of millions of incriminating emails.”
Referring to the “security threat” allegation, Mr Sherborne said: “It is difficult to think of a more serious aggravating factor than that the plaintiff has been deliberately scapegoated by the defendants, and that scapegoating has been used as a false pretext to unlawfully destroy potentially incriminating evidence relating to those same defendants’ unlawful information-gathering conduct. This is particularly true where one of the scapegoats is a senior politician (and another a former Prime Minister) tasked by Parliament with investigating media standards.”
Cable alleges he said he had “declared war on Murdoch” at a constituency rally in 2010 and that a covert recording was illegally obtained.
In the documents, Cable alleges that recordings obtained in a Daily Telegraph “sting” were leaked to the BBC by Lewis. Following the BBC’s reporting of the comments, then Prime Minister David Cameron stripped Cable of responsibility for adjudicating a bid by NGN parent News Corporation to buy broadcaster BSkyB outright.
Lawyers for Watson and Cable have asked the judge to order NGN to further examine materials that may reveal evidence relevant to their case.
NGN opposed some of the discovery searches as “disproportionate” and a “costly and time-consuming” process, but agreed to some of the searches. Hudson added that “extensive” discovery had already been made in the litigation and that the extensive searches of some documents were “disproportionate” given that the defendants’ claim was for less than £100,000 and the discovery requests had already cost the defendants much more than this.
The hearing continues.
