Coulson approved monitoring of Palace phones, says NoW ex-royal editor

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/18/goodman-coulson-phone-hacking-trial

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The former royal editor of the News of the World on Tuesday accused his former boss Andy Coulson of personally approving a plan for the paper's specialist phone-hacker to monitor the phones of three royal aides.

Clive Goodman, giving evidence in the phone hacking trial, claimed that Coulson read the transcript of a voicemail left by Prince Harry and discussed the detail of news stories which had been derived from hacked messages.

He also said that, as the tabloid's editor, Coulson had chaired daily conferences where a senior journalist openly referred to messages that had been left on telephones and to the use of mobile phone data to locate the subject of a story.

After four months of the Old Bailey trial during which he has been seated next to Coulson in the dock, Goodman yesterday sat about 30 feet away in the witness box and told the jury of his involvement in hacking phones, and of Coulson's alleged role in it.

He said he had been taught how to intercept voicemail in January 2005 by the paper's then associate editor, Greg Miskiw, who had started listening to Palace phones three years earlier but had begun to find it "tiresome" to do so.

In October 2005, he had been contacted by the paper's specialist hacker, Glenn Mulcaire, who was worried that his £2,000-a-week retainer was going to be cut. "He was looking to make up this shortfall. Through Greg he clearly knew that I had been monitoring some royal voicemail."

Mulcaire had suggested that if Goodman chose three royal staff, he could provide their phone data, hinting that he could obtain this from the security service who were already monitoring Palace phones. Goodman told the court he then took the offer to Coulson.

The jury has heard that the two men had known each other since the late 1990s and were guests at each other's weddings. "I said that Greg's old contact, Glenn Mulcaire, had offered to monitor three royal phones for us. He would give us direct dial numbers and PINs. He would monitor them ... I did say that there was a suggestion that this was feedback from the security services but I didn't put any strength of belief behind that."

Coulson had agreed that for a two-month trial period, they would pay Mulcaire £500 a week for the project. The money was paid in cash and with the recipient recorded internally under a false name, David Alexander. Goodman had told Mulcaire to target three aides who worked closely with Prince William and Prince Harry.

Soon he was reporting back to Coulson, according to emails shown to the jury: "That new project is getting results." Goodman claimed that Coulson asked him to "pop in" to his office, where they had discussed the project and how it was going. After two months, Goodman emailed Coulson: "Got a second on extending the Matey file please?" Coulson emailed back: "Another month."

Early that December, Goodman told the court, he had recorded Prince Harry, who was then a cadet at Sandhurst, leaving a message for his private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, asking him for help on an essay about the 1980 Iranian embassy siege. He had shown a transcript of the message to Coulson, he said.

He and Coulson had then exchanged a series of emails as Goodman attempted to confirm the story without revealing its source to the Palace. In one message, Goodman told Coulson "As we know it is 100% fact." He went on to tell him that in dealing with the Palace, he would not say that he knew the subject of the prince's essay. "I think that's too precise to get through unnoticed," he wrote.

Goodman said during this time the newsroom of the paper was engaged in hacking "on a pretty industrial scale." As royal editor, he had attended the daily conference chaired by Andy Coulson where, he claimed, the subject of phones had often come up in discussion.

He said that one senior journalist, Mr A, had been in the habit of referring to the telephone traffic between the subjects of stories and to the "Friends and Family" numbers of some targets. Mr A had also referred to voicemail in conference: "It would be a story about a couple: 'We had a great message last night from him to her or her to him.'"

He told the jury that Coulson had banned talk of phones in conference after Mr A spoke openly about the possibility of locating the target of a story by "triangulating" the signal from his mobile phone.

"After that Andy said 'That's enough of that. You're not talking about this in conference any more.'"

Goodman said that Mr A had been using Mulcaire to hack the mobile phones of Coulson and also of Rebekah Brooks, then editing the Sun, in an attempt to steal other reporters' stories and "to find out what the Sun were up to".

Jurors were shown an email which Goodman wrote to Coulson on 3 February 2006 after he learned that Coulson had decided to end "Matey's weekly payment".

In the message, he listed the stories which Mulcaire had delivered in the previous eight weeks: "This information isn't manageable on a story by story basis. There are costs for Matey in setting it up and maintaining it, which he has to cover. A few weeks ago, you asked me to find new ways of getting into the family, especially William and Harry, and I came up with this. Safe, productive and cost-effective. And I'm confident it will become a story gold mine for us if we let it run for just a little longer."

Coulson, however, was unmoved and replied: "I'm sorry but it has to go." By that time, the court was told, Coulson had authorised 15 payments of £500 from his editorial management budget. Goodman had requested the money in memos to the managing editor, Stuart Kuttner, in which he referred to "a source whose details are known to the newspaper but whose identity is security sensitive and must be protected."

Mulcaire had continued to monitor the three royal phones, Goodman said, being paid a total of £4,800 over the following six months on a story-by-story basis.

Jurors were shown emails in which Coulson queried the source of stories. Goodman had replied that one was "from the source we had on a retainer: we absolutely know it to be true". And that another was from "that fella who used to be on a monthly retainer", adding that a quote from Prince William were "his exact words".

Coulson and Stuart Kuttner deny conspiring with Clive Goodman and others to intercept communications. Coulson and Goodman deny conspiring to commit misconduct in public office.