This article provides a narrative beginning in 1999 of investigations by the Metropolitan Police Service (Met) of Greater London into the illegal acquisition of confidential information by agents in collaboration with the news media that is commonly referred to as the phone hacking scandal. The article discusses seven phases of investigations by the Met and several investigations of the Met itself, including critiques and responses regarding the Met's performance. Separate articles provide an overview of the scandal and a comprehensive set of reference lists with detailed background information.
By 2002, the practice by news media organizations of using private investigators ("law enforcement") to acquire confidential information was widespread. Some individuals used illegal methods to accomplish this. Victims of illegal phone hacking included celebrities, politicians, law enforcement officials, solicitors, and ordinary citizens.
As this illegal activity became apparent, suspects were arrested and some were convicted of crimes. Some victims retained solicitors upon learning their privacy had been violated, and filed suit against news media companies and their agents. Some victims received financial payments for violation of privacy. Successful suits and publicity from investigative news articles led to further disclosures, including the names of more victims, more documentary evidence of wrongdoing, admissions of wrongdoing by some news media agents, and payments potentially related to the scandal.
Allegations were made of poor judgement and cover-up by news media executives and law enforcement officials. As a result, additional investigations into illegal acquisition of confidential information were initiated and several senior executives and police officials were forced to resign. There were also significant commercial consequences of the scandal. Contemporary commentators made comparisons with the Watergate scandal.
The Metropolitan Police conducted several investigations between 1999 and 2011. The first three investigations, involving phone taps and seizure of records, successfully gathered large quantities of evidence that confidential information was being acquired illegally, sometimes with the help of public officials including policemen. By 2006, seven men had been found guilty, but no further arrests were made until 2011. The Met was criticized for not aggressively pursuing all the significant leads available from this evidence, for not adequately informing all individuals who were victims of the phone hacking, and for allegedly misleading the public and Parliament about the scope of the problem.
While continuing to investigate illegal acquisition of confidential information, the Met itself became the object of several investigations about the diligence of its probes and possible involvement of its own personnel in illegal activities. After the scope of the phone hacking scandal became generally known in July 2011, the top two officials of the Met resigned. The new Met leadership augmented the ongoing investigations with the unusual measure of bringing in an independent police organization to help. By mid-July 2011, there were as many as ten separate investigations active at the Met, Parliament and other government agencies.
Investigations by the Metropolitan Police
Operation Nigeria (1999) From at least the 1990s, private investigator Jonathan Rees reportedly bought information from former and serving police officers, customs officers, a VAT inspector, bank employees, burglars, and from blaggers who would telephone the Inland Revenue, the Driving & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), banks and phone companies, deceiving them into providing confidential information. He then sold that information to News of the World, the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Times. News of the World alone paid Rees more than £150,000 a year.
In response, and because Rees was also suspected in the 1987 murder of his former partner, the Met's anti-corruption squad CIB3 ran Operation Nigeria. It involved tapping Rees' phone at his agency, Southern Investigations, from April to September 1999 to obtain evidence about the murder and about whether confidential information was being acquired illegally by police and/or reporters. Recorded telephone conversations revealed that Alex Marunchak of News of the World was a regular customer of the agency. It was determined that Rees was purchasing information from improper sources, but no evidence became public that Marunchak or other journalists had committed criminal offences or that they were aware of how Rees acquired the information. The bugging operation ended when it was learned that Rees was planning to plant drugs on a woman so that her husband, Rees' client, could win custody of their child. Rees and others whose voices were recorded during Operation Nigeria (including Austin Warnes, Duncan Hanrahan, Martin King, Tom Kingston, Sid Fillery) were successfully prosecuted and sentenced to jail for various offenses unrelated to illegal acquisition of confidential information.
Rees and another private investigator, Sid Fillery, who later became Rees' partner at Southern Investigations, were under suspicion for the 1987 murder of Daniel Morgan, yet another private investigator and Rees' partner at the time of his murder. Morgan's family claimed Morgan was planning an article to expose police corruption. One of the Met's officers investigating the murder charges, Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook, was warned by Surrey Police and Scotland Yard that he may have become a surveillance target of Sid Fillery. Fillery reportedly used his relationship with Alex Marunchak to arrange for Glenn Mulcaire, then doing work for News of the World, to obtain Cook's home address, his internal payroll number at the Metropolitan police, his date of birth and figures for the amount that he and his wife were paying for their mortgage. Surveillance of Cook is also reported to have involved physically following him and his young children, attempts to access his voicemail and that of his wife, and possibly attempts to send a "Trojan horse" email in an attempt to steal information from his computer. Paperwork reportedly in the possession of the Scotland Yard shows that "Mulcaire did this on the instructions of Greg Miskiw, the paper's assistant editor and a close friend of Marunchak." When one of the two vans parked outside Cook's home was stopped by Met officers, the driver turned out to be a photojournalist for News of the World. The vans were also licensed to the newspaper. During the same week, it appeared that attempts had been made to open letters which had been left in Cook's external postbox, indicating a "possible attempt to pervert the course of justice."
The Met handled this apparent attempt by agents of News of the World to interfere with a murder inquiry by having informal discussions with Rebekah Brooks, then editor for News of the World. "Scotland Yard took no further action, apparently reflecting the desire of Dick Fedorcio, who had a close working relationship with Brooks, to avoid unnecessary friction with the News of the World." Fedorico was Director of Public Affairs and Internal Communication for the Met.
As of July 2011, Cook and his wife were believed to be preparing a legal action against the News of the World, Marunchak, Miskiw and Mulcaire. Marunchak was also identified by BBC as the News of the World executive who had arranged for someone to plant a Trojan on the computer of a former British intelligence NCO, Ian Hurst.
In 2000, Rees was sentenced to seven years in prison and served five. Upon release in 2005, he resumed his private investigative work for News of the World, where Andy Coulson by that time had succeeded Rebekah Brooks as editor. Coulson has maintained in evidence given to parliament and under oath in court that he did not know anything about illegal activity during the seven years he spent near or at the top of the News of the World.
No one was charged with illegal acquisition of confidential information as a result of Operation Nigeria. According to Nick Davies, reporter for The Guardian, the Met collected hundreds of thousands of documents during the investigations into Jonathan Rees over his links with corrupt officers and over his alleged murder of Daniel Morgan. Although charges of murder against Rees were dismissed in 2011, Mr. Davies believes these "boxloads" of paperwork "could include explosive new evidence of illegal news-gathering by the News of the World and other papers."
Operation Glade (2003)
For years, private investigators in addition to Rees were plying the lucrative trade in illegally acquired confidential information. The specialty of John Boyall's agency, Liberty Resources & Intelligent Research Limited, was acquiring information from confidential databases. Boyall's assistant was Glenn Mulcaire until the autumn of 2001, when News of the World's assistant editor, Greg Miskiw, attracted Mulcaire away by giving him a full-time contract to do work for the newspaper.
Boyall eventually attracted the attention of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which is not a police organization but an independent authority with a mandate to "uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals."
With the assistance of the Devon & Cornwall police, the ICO raided Boyall's premises in November 2002. Documents seized there led the ICO to yet another private investigator, Steve Whittamore, who, with his wife, ran JJ information Limited. In March 2003, Whittamore's premises were raided under what was by then dubbed Operation Motorman. Documents from this raid established that confidential information was illegally acquired from telephone companies, the Driving & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and the Police National Computer. It was reported that "media, especially newspapers, insurance companies and local authorities chasing council tax arrears all appear in the sales ledger of the dodgy agency." Prices were clearly established: "Ex-directory telephone numbers cost [a] Hampshire detective £40, and he sold them on for £70. A vehicle check cost £70, and customers were charged £150. And so on."
In May 2006, the ICO issued a report titled "What price privacy?" Afterward, they received a request under the Freedom of Information Act "for further information about the publications that the 305 journalists were employed by and a breakdown of their activity." Some information was provided to the requester, and a follow-up report was issued by the ICO in December 2006 titled "What price privacy now?"" However, much of the information obtained through Operation Motorman has never been released to the public. As recently as September 2011, the ICO declined to release information under another Freedom of Information Act request.
Many people were involved in the illegal trafficking of confidential information. Paul Marshall, a former civilian communications officer based at Tooting police station in London, provided confidential police information to Alan King, a retired police officer, who passed it along to Boyall, who gave it to Whittamore, who in turn sold it to agents of news media organizations. Whittamore's network of information gatherers gave him access to confidential records at telephone companies, banks, post offices, hotels, theatres, and prisons, including BT Group, Crédit Lyonnais, Goldman Sachs, Hang Seng Bank, Glen Parva prison, and Stocken prison. "
Although there was evidence of many people being engaged in illegal activity, relatively few were questioned. Operation Motorman's lead investigator said in a 2006 inquiry that "his team were told not to interview journalists involved. The investigator...accused authorities of being too 'frightened' to tackle journalists."