Phone Hacking Trial: Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson trial begins today:UPDATE BROOKS NOT GUILTY, COULSON GUILTY

Rebekah Brooks and her husband, Charlie, were at the centre of a complex cover-up operation that used Hollywood-style code names, allusions to spycraft and the ruse of pizza deliveries as they attempted to keep incriminating evidence from the police, the phone-hacking trial at the Old Bailey heard today.
The former Murdoch executive, her husband and an array of security men – who used the script from the war thriller film Where Eagles Dare to communicate – were accused of working together to “pervert the course of justice” on the day Mrs Brooks was arrested in 2011 in connection with Scotland Yard’s phone-hacking investigation.
The operatives allegedly directed by News International’s former head of security, Mark Hanna, began their scheme initially at the Brooks’s Oxfordshire farmhouse and then later at the couple’s London address in Chelsea Harbour.
Andrew Edis QC, the chief prosecuting counsel, said: “Mrs Brooks knew she was likely to be arrested and, if she was, the police would have the power to search her property.” He added: “Arrangements were made to remove material from both these addresses [Oxford and London] with a view to prevent material coming into the possession of the police.”
The jury heard that security staff drove first to the Brooks’s country address near Chipping Norton the night before the former chief executive of NI was arrested. Material was removed and taken to the Murdoch organisation’s UK headquarters in Wapping.
When Mr and Mrs Brooks returned to London, she initially visited her solicitors and then went to Lewisham police station for a formal interview by officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Weeting investigation into phone hacking.
The cover-up operation, which was eventually discovered, the prosecution says, from phone records, CCTV from the Chelsea address, and a final flaw in its execution, was going on while Mrs Brooks was being interviewed by police. When the security team thought it had successfully completed its missions at the two addresses, a message was sent by one of the operatives which said: “Broadsword to Danny Boy. Pizza delivered and the chicken is in the pot.”
Mr Edis told the jury that the “Danny Boy” line was spoken by Richard Burton in the film of the Alistair Maclean thriller novel. “Burton was a field agent fighting the Nazis in Germany,” he added.

The prosecution said that as part of the complicated subterfuge at the Chelsea Harbour address, one of the security team posed as a pizza delivery man to avoid arousing suspicion during the operation. Contents of a text revealed a suggestion that the entire operation could be invoiced as a “pizza delivery”. Mr Edis told the jury: “Of course you cannot log any hours to ‘perverting the course of justice’. You have to say it’s something else don’t you?”    
Mr Edis said that part of the concealment plan was to hide material contained in a black bag and left behind a bin in the underground car park at Chelsea Harbour. One of the experienced organisers of the plan, on being told that it was apparently a success, texted back: “Fucking amateurs. We should have done a DLB or brush contact on the riverside. Cheers mate…”
This, Mr Edis said, was a reference to espionage terminology where DLB stood for “a dead letterbox” where items could be anonymously left and later picked up. But the bag left behind the underground bin was noticed the following day by a cleaner at the complex, who handed it over to the police. The jury were told that CCTV footage showed that when Mr and Mrs Brooks returned to their London flat, they and others were involved in a search to find out what had happened to the material left behind the bin.    

In another part of the prosecution’s opening, Mr Edis said that Mrs Brooks had taken steps – during the tense days surrounding the July 2011 decision to close the News of the World – to hide material that she believed could form part of the police’s investigations into phone hacking.
The court heard that she and her former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter, had removed seven boxes, containing Mrs Brooks’s personal notebooks, from NI’s company archive. The prosecution claimed that Mrs Brooks at the time knew there was a police investigation and a course of justice in existence which would be perverted if evidence was hidden.
The jury was told that Mrs Carter, along with her son Nick and Gary Keegan, the husband of Mrs Brooks’ other assistant, Deborah Keegan, went to the Murdoch company’s archive in Enfield in north London to collect seven boxes of notepads spanning 12 years of Mrs Brooks’ career at Wapping. It was alleged that the boxes were taken to Mrs Carter’s home.
Mr Edis said this group of people had been chosen to carry out this task two days earlier because they could be trusted. The jury were told the boxes of notebooks have never been found. During another part of the prosecution’s opening, Mrs Brooks was accused of taking a lead role in an email deletion policy inside News International in 2010.
Initially the deletion period was meant to cover the period up to 2007 when Clive Goodman, the former royal editor of the News of the World, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator working for the paper, were jailed for phone hacking.
The jury were shown internal emails sent to other company executives where Mrs Brooks asked how the deletion process was progressing, and in one communication asked for it to be extended from 2007 to 2010.
When this suggestion was questioned she replied: “Yes, January 2010. Clean sweep, thanks.”
Mr Edis said: “So there’s a change in the date. Now it is anything before January 2010. Which happens to catch her entire time as a working editor at News International.” The prosecution will begin its first full days of calling witnesses on Wednesday.
The trial is expected to last until Easter next year.

PeterMac wrote:Three news desk editors have just pleaded GUILTY.
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Mr Edis said Mulcaire pleaded guilty to conspiracy to unlawfully intercept mobile phone voicemail messages in November 2006. Earlier this year, in these proceedings, he also admitted three counts of conspiracy to commit phone hacking, along with a count of phone hacking, he added.
The barrister said that Miskiw, Weatherup and Thurlbeck had also each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to illegally access voicemails.
He said: "Now what we say about that is, using all of that information that I've just given about those pleas, that there was a conspiracy which involved a significant number of people and it was quite a substantial conspiracy.
"And that may help you to decide now. Because those names, they knew. So who else knew?"

Not good for the others.

PeterMac wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

aiyoyo wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

aiyoyo wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

russiandoll wrote:Ian Hitchings ‏@IamIanHitchings [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Police still hunting for ten mobile phones and computer gadgets potentially linked to Rebekah Brooks [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

aiyoyo wrote:Didnt realise they were calling celebrity as witnesses.  
Wonder who else is on the Witness List?

tiny wrote:Martin Hickman ‏@martin_hickman [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Evans is a supergrass: he's pleaded guilty to phone hacking at Sunday Mirror and NoW, now done deal with CPS.

is there hope for Madeleine or am I reading this wrong

Hacking trial: Rebekah Brooks ‘had £200,000 deal to silence Max Clifford’

Phone-hacking trial told how News International wanted to halt civil claim
CAHAL MILMO Tuesday 04 February 2014

Senior executives at Rupert Murdoch’s News International considered giving publicist Max Clifford a £200,000 annual contract in the expectation he would halt a civil phone-hacking damages claim, the Old Bailey heard.
Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of NI, took part in the discussions in 2010 over how to cope with emerging lawsuits against the News of the World from alleged victims of voicemail interception and concerns that private investigator Glenn Mulcaire would be ordered to name people he had dealt with at the now defunct Sunday newspaper.

A jury at the Old Bailey in central London heard that Mrs Brooks had concerns about the potential deal with Mr Clifford because it might look like the company was trying to buy the PR man’s silence.
Notes from a meeting between NI managers and lawyers in January 2010 said that Mrs Brooks had persuaded Mr Clifford to agree to a £200,000 deal to “represent The Sun/do business with The Sun” and if it was put in writing he would “call off the lawyers”. It was suggested that Mrs Brooks could even meet the publicist with the money.
A memo of the discussion, read to jurors by prosecutor Andrew Edis QC, said: “We either get something in writing or she could physically turn up with the cash to see him.”

The trial was told there was a time pressure to conclude the deal before Mulcaire, who had been jailed in 2007 in relation to hacking the voicemails of members of the royal household, was compelled to disclose the identities of journalists employed by NI subsidiary News Group Newspapers (NGN), who were allegedly involved in eavesdropping. Mulcaire has pleaded guilty to hacking-related charges at an earlier stage of the current proceedings.
The internal NI memo continued: “You have to think about what is worse – her doing a deal with Max which will be perceived as a cover-up or indemnifying Mulcaire so that he doesn’t say anything about NGN.
“[Mulcaire] could say anything and he could say anybody… Brooks said it would look terrible if seen to be ‘buying off Max’.”

In a later email read to the hacking trial, Mrs Brooks said she was in the “throes of a settlement” with “slippery fish” Mr Clifford and appeared keen to avoid any further disagreement with the PR man.
The court heard that a month after the January 2010 meeting, Mulcaire was ordered by a judge to divulge the names of those who he said had asked him to hack phones. Following this, Mr Clifford made a settlement “privately” with Mrs Brooks which included £200,000 to cover legal costs.
Detective Constable Richard Fitzgerald told the court that he had examined billing data from Mulcaire’s phone, two lines at the NOTW and the home phone number of former NOTW royal editor Clive Goodman, who has denied conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office. The data showed that Mulcaire made 1,450 calls to 87 different voicemails in a six-month period between 2005 and 2006.
The disclosures came as the prosecution enters the final stages of its case against Mrs Brooks and six co-defendants, who deny all the charges against them.
A total of 282 people had their voicemails accessed 6,813 times between 2004 and 2006, according to billing data from phone lines used to carry out the interceptions, the court heard.
The jury was told that the trial could last until May.

PeterMac wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Hacking trial: Rebekah Brooks ‘had £200,000 deal to silence Max Clifford’

Phone-hacking trial told how News International wanted to halt civil claim

Notes from a meeting between NI managers and lawyers in January 2010 said that Mrs Brooks had persuaded Mr Clifford to agree to a £200,000 deal to “represent The Sun/do business with The Sun” and if it was put in writing he would “call off the lawyers”. It was suggested that Mrs Brooks could even meet the publicist with the money. A memo of the discussion, read to jurors by prosecutor Andrew Edis QC, said: “We either get something in writing or she could physically turn up with the cash to see him.”

REST SNIPPED

The jury was told that the trial could last until May.

tiny wrote:Martin Hickman ‏@martin_hickman [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Evans is a supergrass: he's pleaded guilty to phone hacking at Sunday Mirror and NoW, now done deal with CPS.

is there hope for Madeleine or am I reading this wrong

Woofer wrote:

tiny wrote:Martin Hickman ‏@martin_hickman [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Evans is a supergrass: he's pleaded guilty to phone hacking at Sunday Mirror and NoW, now done deal with CPS.

is there hope for Madeleine or am I reading this wrong

Not sure what `done deal with CPS` means.  Am I hoping for too much when I hope he hacked the Mcs phones and has done a deal with the CPS?