Phone-hacking trial: Clive Goodman denies having ever paid a police officer
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Version 0 of 1. A News of the World journalist told his bosses he needed cash to pay royal police for stories as part of the "routine" exaggeration designed to make his stories more "credible" and get placed in the paper, the Old Bailey has heard. Clive Goodman on Monday denied at the phone-hacking trial that he ever paid a police officer and said there was "no truth whatsoever" in the prosecution case that he did so. "It is an enormously competitive world and you really lived or died by the stories you got and if people thought your sources were more important than they actually were, you stood a much better chance of getting stories in the paper or stories getting more space," the former royal editor of the Sunday tabloid said. Goodman was then taken through a series of emails that he sent his bosses while he was on the paper requesting payments for police officers. In one email sent on July 2005 to News of the World managing editor Stuart Kuttner, Goodman explains that he had three contacts who were paid only in cash, suggesting two of them are royal police officers. "Two are in uniform and we – them, you, me, the editor – would all end up in jail if anyone traced their payments. They've had Special Branch crawling all over them since we ran a five-par story about an Operation Trident arrest at Clarence House," he said in his email. In his second day in the witness box at the hacking trial Goodman said this was a lie designed to expedite payments to his real sources. Asked by his counsel, David Spens QC, why he had told Kuttner "two are in uniform", Goodman said: "Really to emphasis that we needed to pay these people because they do take these risks ... great risks and merited great consideration." Earlier on Monday, Goodman told jurors his sources worked in the royal palaces, were friends of the royals or were royals themselves, and that royal staff took great risks talking to the press. They would, he said, go from a "position of some comfort to complete ruin over night". The third person he paid in cash, he told jurors, was a journalist on a daily newspaper who went by the alias Alec Hall. In another email he told the then editor Andy Coulson that he needed payment for "one of our cops" who had "got hold of a rare and just printed staff telephone book". Asked if this source was a police officer, Goodman replied: "No, he wasn't." Asked why did he claim the source was, he said: "I was trying to ensure payment for a contact." Jurors heard of a further email in which Goodman claimed he needed cash for a "Buckingham Palace copper". He explained this was "because it makes the story seem a great deal more credible". He said the source for this story was not a royal protection officer but another source, who was known in the contributor system as "Anderson", a fake name for one of his regular contacts. Spens put it to Goodman that the prosecution's case, opened last year, was that he was "in fact paying police". Was there any truth in that, he was asked? "No, no truth in that whatsoever," Goodman said. In another email Goodman writes to a colleague on the paper telling him of a "security meltdown" at Balmoral after a routine patrol discovered one of the royal protection officers had gone missing. It transpired he had gone shopping for souvenir shortbread and had been sent back to London to find out whether he faced disciplinary action. Goodman said he could substantiate the story but it might be too dangerous for his contact. Again, the journalist told the jury that his source was not a police officer but a contact that went by the fake name of David Farrish. Goodman denies conspiring to cause misconduct in public office by paying public officials to leak information to the paper. Kuttner and Coulson who are also on trial deny the charges against them. Goodman also accused Piers Morgan of doing a "shameful thing" by exposing one of the News of the World's top royal sources when he was editor of the paper. He told jurors that Morgan and another executive on the paper decided to expose the Prince of Wales's senior valet almost 20 years ago after he approached the paper to try and secure a book deal chronicling his 15 to 20 year career at the palace. Goodman said that Morgan "decided this could not happen, it was too complicated" and that such a book would be injuncted. "They then took the decision that the only way forward to this now was to expose Mr Stronach," said Goodman. He said this broke the "golden rule" of journalism which was to protect sources. As a result the valet was arrested and, although released by police, he was dismissed from the palace. "What we did was pretty discreditable," said Goodman. "One of the golden rules in newspapers was we do not write about sources." Morgan was editor of the News of the World between 1994 and 1995. Goodman has already spent time in prison on hacking related charges and denies a new charge that he paid public officials for information for stories. The trial continues. |