Sun reporter knew MoD official could have got sack over £100,000 leaks
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Version 0 of 1. The Sun’s chief reporter knew that £100,000 in payments to a Ministry of Defence official for stories could have led to her getting sacked, a jury has heard. But John Kay, 71, said he “never” thought the payments he requested for Bettina Jordan-Barber were illegal and would become the subject of a trial at the Old Bailey. “My biggest fear for her was that somehow the MoD would find out that she had been paid by us, and that would be a breach of her contract of employment and that she would be dismissed,” Kay said. He told how he had arranged discreet cash payments to her via Thomas Cook to prevent her identity becoming known. Kay told jurors that he accepted that part of her motive for leaking stories was to make money, but she was also a whistleblower. “She made it quite clear she was keen to expose wrongdoing,” Kay said. He pointed out that she continued to provide him with stories even after 2011 when he told her that he could no longer pay her when the police started a fresh investigation into News International. “Part of her motivation”, he said was “to see things the MoD considered undesirable [to be in the media], to be brought into the public arena. He said his overriding interest in having her as a paid source was to “publish stories the MoD were interested in suppressing” and “to lay before the public what was going on, warts and all”. He said he was “categorically confident” she was not leaking stories to any other paper, because “it was too risky” for her. Kay, who has been with the paper since 1973, has been charged with conspiring with Jordan-Barber to commit misconduct in public office as a result of the payments over an eight-year period between 2004 and 2012. The jury has previously heard that Kay invariably referred to her as his “number one military contact” or “my ace contact” in emails to the paper’s former editor Rebekah Brooks requesting authorisation for payments to her. Jurors were told on Tuesday that he described Jordan Barber as such “to impress upon the editor how good the source was”. Jurors heard that Kay became friends with Jordan-Barber over time and his mobile number was logged in her phone as “Godfather K”. Kay said her position at the MoD did not concern him. “All that mattered was the information that she was giving stacked up, stood up, that was the be all and end all of it,” he told jurors. Under examination by his barrister, he said that he received no “guidance” or “training” in his 50-year career about payments to public officials. He described Tom Crone, the paper’s former in house legal adviser, as “absolutely first class” and told jurors he had written a book on media law. It was not until 2011, when police were circling News International, that Kay became aware payments could be illegal. He recalled there was “chit chat” in the office that summer about press reports that the Metropolitan police’s investigation Operation Elveden would be widened beyond alleged payments made to police officers by newspapers. He did not think at any point that his publisher News International would reveal to detectives that she was his source and had received payments. Kay told how he first came across Jordan-Barber in 2003. She had phoned the newsdesk to inquire as to whether the paper was publishing a story about an affair between a naval officer and an army officer. The call was passed to Kay by his newsdesk as a “specialist in military affairs”. He thought she was an “interesting source” and arranged to meet her at a wine bar near the paper’s offices the next day. He said he didn’t ask what she did at the MoD because he did not want to “spook her”. He told her he was not interested in “tittle tattle” but “important” and “serious stories”. Kay told jurors, that in his experience, the MoD’s attitude “was a case of paranoia, a case of what they would think were bad stories, equipment shortages, bullying, sex scandals”. “I learned [over time] that the MoD was a secretive department and would sit on stories.” “My primary duty to her [Jordan-Barber] was to maintain discretion and at all times to do everything possible to avoid having her name ever coming out,” he said. Over lunch in Wapping, he told her that the paper would be interested in the “sorts of stories the MoD was sitting on” and that he could arrange a “discreet payment through Thomas Cook”. “She left [the lunch] knowing that she could provide a service to the newspaper by supplying stories the Ministry of Defence would suppress,” he said. “I made it perfectly plain that any information she gave to me would have to be stood up by the MoD and we would have to double source stories before they could be published. “I said she would have total protection and that her name would never be disclosed by us and I would go to great lengths to ensure her name was never disclosed in the office.” She would typically ring in with a “morsel” of information which would then day between a day and two weeks “to crack”. Asked by Trevor Burke QC if he would have ever revealed Jordan-Barber’s name, Kay replied: “Never, under any circumstances.” “Have you ever revealed a source?”, Burke asked. “Absolutely never. Unthinkable to do so.” “And never identified Bettina Jordan-Barber to Rebekah Wade when she was editor?” “Certainly not.” He said he was not aware that part of Jordan-Barber’s job was to “prepare news briefs” about defence stories. He had never received any documents from her or sought them. Kay said all 69 stories that can be partially or fully attributed to Bettina Jordan-Barber were in the “public interest”. He also said they were for the public good. He said one front page story, revealing the head of the bomb disposal Colonel Bob Seddon was quitting because of resources for soldiers in Aghanistan led to immediate action by the prime minister. The Sun, he said, was the first paper the prime minister read every day. He went on to tell jurors that the “vast majority” of his stories that were “army related” during the eight year indictment period were not from Jordan-Barber, Kay told jurors. Kay explained that he did not pay all his sources. “I would say I paid about one third of them.” Kay is on trial with three other Sun journalists, all of whom deny all charges. The trial continues. |