Phone-hacking allegations 'utterly unfounded', says Stuart Kuttner

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/17/phone-hacking-allegations-stuart-kuttner

Version 0 of 1.

The former managing editor of the News of the World, Stuart Kuttner, told detectives that he had never knowingly been involved in hacking phones or bribing police and was "utterly appalled" by the allegations he was facing, the Old Bailey heard on Tuesday.

In transcripts of interviews that were read to the jury in the phone-hacking trial, Kuttner told detectives on the day of his arrest in August 2011: "I'm shattered with having offered, quite properly, to come here to fill in gaps, to find myself on the end of what, in my view, are utterly unfounded allegations."

He recalled the arrest five years earlier of the paper's royal editor, Clive Goodman, as "the most traumatic in my life in newspapers. It was an appalling day. Subsequently, much more recently, the day the News of the World closed was equally traumatic in a different way. And today exceeds both of them."

The detectives asked him whether he had conspired to hack phones with six named senior journalists from the News of the World – Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, who have denied the charge in this trial; Greg Miskiw, Neville Thurlbeck, and James Weatherup who have pleaded guilty; and Ian Edmondson, who has denied the charge and is to be tried at a later date.

Kuttner said: "I neither conspired with Rebekah Brooks nor with anybody nor had any part in phone hacking."

He added: "I have never knowingly bribed a policeman – which appears to be among your allegations – and I have never knowingly played any part whatsoever in the hacking or bugging of anybody's telephone... I'm utterly appalled at the allegations made against me personally."

His lawyer told detectives that since retiring from the News of the World in 2009 he had suffered a heart attack and a brain-stem stroke, which had impaired his memory. Kuttner said he did not recall authorising payments to the paper's specialist hacker Glenn Mulcaire who had been recorded in paperwork variously as Paul Williams, Matey, John Jenkins, Jane Street, David Alexander, Nine Consultancy and Euro Research and Information Services.

He told detectives that, although he had become an executive at the paper, "I think I have the word 'reporter' inscribed on my heart." He only rarely became involved in covering stories, he said, but recalled an occasion when he had done so because Clive Goodman would not.

"He wouldn't stir himself to go out and cover stories," he told his interviewers. "That seems to be a negation of a reporter's role."

The result was that he and Rebekah Brooks had decided to do the job for Goodman, which involved taking a train to Paris.

He continued: "I had been in touch for some months with a man called Johnnie Bryant. He had had a relationship with the Duchess of York and he had come round to the view that in return for a lot of money, he would sell his story."

On the train to Paris they had found Neil Wallis, pursuing the same story on behalf of the Sun."Unfortunately, whoever ran Eurostar managed to make it the longest ever train journey to Paris, 17 hours. Waterloo to Paris – 17 hours!"

Kuttner, Brooks and Coulson all deny conspiring to intercept communications. The trial continues.

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.