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EX-PRIME MINISTER Gordon Brown was allegedly implicated in a ‘fake security threat’ by Rupert Murdoch’s executives to give them an excuse to destroy millions of emails, the High Court has heard.
Lawyers claim the ‘astonishing’ plot was allegedly trumped-up and executed by three of the most powerful media bosses in the world:
- Paul Cheesbrough, Murdoch’s British tech guru who now runs IT at Fox in the US.s.
- Sir William Lewis – who was Rupert Murdoch’s right-hand-man for 15 years – but is now an even more controversial figure, as he was recently made publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, one of the most prestigious papers is the US, now owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.
- Rebekah Brooks, the boss of Murdoch’s British publishing wing and now the archenemy of press reformer Prince Harry.
- Paul Cheesbrough, Murdoch’s British tech guru who now runs IT at Fox in the US.
Allegations of the conspiracy emerged in Prince Harry’s case against the publishers of The Sun in the High Court, in which Labour peer Lord Tom Watson is also making a supporting claim.
Two other politicians, who are also suing NGN for unlawful information gathering, attended court with their solicitors.
Prince Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne said that the three bosses ‘falsely scapegoated’ Brown and Watson in order to create a ‘false narrative.’
The barrister raised the issue in a bid to get further documents disclosed from NGN.
But in a defence document, solicitor Maxine Mossman, acting for NGN stated,
‘Paul Cheesbrough and Will Lewis: Ms Gallagher (Tom Watson’s solicitor) seeks to include Mr Cheesbrough and Mr Lewis on the basis Mr Cheesbrough sent an email reporting the security threat to Ms Brooks and Mr Lewis on 24.01.11. As noted…NGN has already searched the email data of Mr Lewis and Mr Cheesbrough for the period 01.02.11 to 14.02.11 using the search terms “data w/3 theft”, “security breach”, “sell w/3 theft” and Tom Watson” and has disclosed emails relating to both Mr Lewis and Mr Cheesbrough. NGN has also already agreed to search the data of Ms Brooks.’
The story started in 2010 when The Sun’s publishers News Group Newspapers started deleting millions of emails from its internal servers.
The company have said that the deletions were carried-out to clean up the system as part of routine maintenance and to modernise databases.
Though the phone hacking scandal was warming up, the company was not yet under formal investigation.
But the situation changed later that year when film star Sienna Miller launched a civil claim in the High Court for phone hacking, and her lawyers formally advised that News International preserve evidence.
The company was then put under further legal obligations, when a short while later, the police launched Operation Weeting on January 25th 2011.
The police had already put Lewis and others on notice not to destroy evidence.
The claimants’ lawyers allege that Will Lewis began looking for an excuse to carry on the deletions.
The court heard that the ‘false justification’ was a story that Gordon Brown was trying to get his hands on Rebekah Brooks’ emails.
On the day before the police began their investigation – and coincidentally, on the same day that Rupert Murdoch had visited his London HQ – Paul Cheesbrough emailed Brooks, and copied Lewis in, saying that a source had come forward with secret intelligence.
Cheesbrough wrote that Gordon Brown had spoken to a second person about Rebekah Brooks’ email data.
The second person had apparently been leaked Brooks’ confidential emails by a disloyal insider at Murdoch’s IT department, who was sympathetic to the Labour Party.
The full email was disclosed to the court for the first time:
From: Cheesbrough, Paul
To: Brooks, Rebekah
CC: Lewis, Will
Date: 24/01/2011, 18:11:54
Subject:
Will and I were visited by an outside source this afternoon who shared with
us a conversation that he claims happened between Gordon Brown and
another person regarding your personal email data. The claim was that
someone from inside NI, and inside IT in particular, had been leaking your
email data to the person who met with Gordon Brown. The rationale
mentioned was that the person in IT was sympathetic towards the Labour
Party, and the data goes back in to the late 1990’s. He mentioned email
servers, the email archive and the process of ‘mounting’ hard drives. He
provided us with no further detail, other than that his informant was a
trusted Police source and implied that the source had been in recent
conversation with the person who had met with Gordon Brown. No
timeframes were provided.
Following the conversation, I’m personally looking at the allegations in
detail I’ll put additional measures in place immediately to protect your data.
I’ll verbally update you first thing tomorrow morning on this.
Paul.
The lawyers claim that the ‘fake security’ threat gave them ‘false justification’ to carry on deleting emails in defiance of the police ban.
However, lawyers for News Group resisted the application, stating that new searches were irrelevant because Tom Watson has made similar claims in earlier legal documents known as the ‘Generic Particulars of Claim.’
But the claimants hit back, stating that the police did not find out that their instructions were being ignored for six months.
On July 8 2011, the police had a meeting with Lewis and Cheesbrough to ask for an explanation.
A witness statement by Tom Watson’s lawyer Ellen Gallagher states: ‘Both Mr Cheesbrough and Mr Lewis were also present at a meeting with the MPS on 8 July 2011…when Mr Cheesbrough raised the so-called security threat as a reason for NGN’s deletion of emails…’
Paul Cheesbrough told the Met Detective Inspector: ‘We did have a security consideration. Whatever we extracted, we purged (deleted) on the ‘live’ system. We’ve always been clear about that. We had a tip that someone from the inside was trying to sell our corporate email data to Tom WATSON MP of the Labour Party.’
The Detective Inspector replied and complained that, ‘This has had an impact on our investigation’ and that the police had not been ‘informed’ about the ‘measures.’
A full police memo about this meeting was disclosed by the court for the first time:
Title: MINUTES OF MEETING NOTW 08/07/2011 0930-1245 HRS (DC
HALE)
Persons present: Paul CHEESBROUGH (NI) Michael DRURY (BCL)
Hannah RAPHAEL (BCL) DI RATCLIFFE, DS HARKNETT, DC HALE
(minute taker) – later Will LEWIS and Chris BIRCH
[…]
WH: Discussion re information from NEWELL re the MBR. NEWELL states
he was told to delete data once the extraction was done. Did you ask him to
do this?
PC: No. We did have a security consideration. Whatever we extracted, we
purged (deleted) on the ‘live’ system. We’ve always been clear about that.
We had a tip that someone from the inside was trying to sell our corporate
email data to Tom WATSON MP of the Labour Party.
DI: This has had an impact on our investigation. This meant you went
through extra security measures about which we have not been informed.
PC: Our No.1 priority for extraction was to extract everything required
legally for retention beyond 1 year. No.2 — once extracted, the project to
retire that system was to start. We commissioned STROZ to try and identify
the NI employee. The initial intelligence was that it was someone on our
books. The update was that it was an ex-employee.
[…]
PC: The plan was to reduce the live archive into a year, move everything
over and then add the material over a year.
WH: That makes sense. What wasn’t making sense was why there was the
deletion. Now we know of the security threat, it makes sense.
MD: This is a specific example of one of the security measures in place.
DI: Is that threat recorded?
PC: No
DI: Requests Will LEWIS attends to discuss
1015 hours — Will LEWIS attends
WL: We got a warning from a source that a current member of staff had got
access to Rebekah’s emails and had passed them to Tom WATSON MP.
This came to Rebekah. I was asked to meet the source. I will consult with
BCL as to whether I can tell you the identity of the source. The source
repeated the threat. Then the source came back and said it was a former
member of staff and the emails had definitely been passed and that it was
controlled by Gordon BROWN. This added to our anxieties. We took steps
to try and be more specific around her emails.
PC: We commissioned STROZ with a completely separate team to
examine the system.
WL: We also engaged a civil lawyer to discuss writing to Tom WATSON.
We took action to reduce the number of people with access to the system.
PC: This contributed to our need to secure data away from the old archive.
WL: Tom WATSON has been remarkably well-informed on this. We
apologise for hiding this piece of work from you.
26
DI: Discussion re Tom WATSON and his possession of material and
possible staff responsible
WL: We discussed the issue. PC had sacked a lot of people. We cast the
net back 2 years to try and identify the leak. The tip came in mid-January
2011 and STROZ were re-commissioned in early February.
DI: Can I speak to STROZ about this?
WL: Yes. We haven’t been able to prove the information of the source.
DI: Have you looked at what you think was leaked?
WL: She (Rebekah) looked at it and went into a panic.
PC: There was mention of emails back to 1997.
WL: We have our suspicions, but we don’t have any evidence.
MD: We need to view this issue in context. We didn’t know we were
deleting material that had not been extracted. At that time, there was no
criminal investigation. The circumstances and rationale for deletion will be
written up.
WH/PC: We will sit down and sort all this out in the statement.
MD: Agreed
[…]
DI: Re the Rebekah emails, what did you do?
PC: Initially, we tried to find the scope of the employee base able to extract
data. This was outside our skills. We engaged STROZ. By the end of
February, early March, STROZ reported that there was nothing that could
be done. We increased her security protection — new passwords etc.
DI: Did anyone other than her review her email account?
WL: I didn’t see her emails.
DI: What was the ‘damage’?
WL: Rebekah looked at this. There was the whole WATSON / BROWN
thing. She was a Tony BLAIR supporter whilst she was editor of THE SUN.
We thought there could have been emails at the time. They were very good
friends. There was potential for that to be used against her in a negative
way.
WL: Discussion re who knows what at the corporation and potential leaks.
Explains the rationale for deciding against confronting Torn WATSON MP
re his handling of stolen NI data. Perception issues — NEWS CORP did
not want to be accused of bullying if they challenged WATSON.
1040 hours — Will LEWIS left the meeting.
Will Lewis has not commented on the allegations and NGN have never given an explanation of why the company did not inform the police of the deletions for six months