….and Sue Akers lets loose the dogs of law

Somehow, Newscorp CEO Rebekah Brooks managed, in the delayed letter to Keith Vaz MP explaining her dyslexia about personal pronouns, to turn her diaphanous negligee of a defence into one that now stands before us Naked as Nature Intended…..as the News of the World used to say in the good old days.

I confess that I hadn’t read her self-inflicted lettre de cachet in full until this morning; but on doing so, I was struck by one particularly suicidal plea. Explaining her use of ‘we pay coppers all the time guv’ to have meant ‘they pay coppers all the time guv, straight up, we never pay coppers all the time’, Mrs Brooks penned this immortal pearl:

 “If, in doing so, I gave the impression that I had knowledge of any specific cases, I can assure you that this was not my intention.”

Further to The Slog’s encyclopaedic knowledge of truth embroidery as outlined earlier in the week, the tell-tale words of the unconsciously guilty are ‘was not my intention’. It’s a bit like ‘at this moment in time’, instead of ‘now’: an innocent person would say ‘you have my word that I don’t’. Not that I’m suggesting Becky is lying her red head off – perish the thought. I merely point out that this is a use of words sufficient to have rendered Sigmund Freud tumescent with vindication of his psychiatric theories.

Here’s why: what Brooks unconsciously says – in postulating that black is white – goes like this:

“If I in any way gave the game away about having intimate knowledge of specific cases, I can assure you this was not my intention”.

Although for myself, I confess to wondering if poor Rebekah has Raskolnikov’s Syndrome by Proxy – and thus is very probably entirely innocent – this equally obviously isn’t what more cynical officers inside Operation Weeting think. This morning, Sue Akers’ squad confirmed that  they would be ‘scoping out’ an investigation into the corruption of police officers by the media.

For Sue’s sake if nothing else, I hope that isn’t going to include an investigation of Rebekah Brook’s brain, because such will surely require the sort of magnification devices not usually issued to the CID. Scooping out the Newscorp CEO’s cerebral matter would be a five-minute procedure requiring only a sub-atomic spoon, and access via one of her ears; but scoping out what goes on inside her head might get the Metropolitan Police into metaphysics beyond human understanding.

I’m also left wondering just how closely the letter was examined by the Newscorp legal beagles. I suspect they crawled all over it for days, and that this explains the delay Murdoch’s men requested. But of course, lawyers have no understanding of real, living linguistics: they know only the art of arranging devils on a pinhead, in the hope of making them look like angels.

Whatever happened, Mrs Brooks’ letter is a complete failure on every level. Leaving Chris Bryant speechless is a feat in its own right. But in leaving herself open to charges of everything from stupidity to criminal conspiracy, Newscorp’s Chief Executive Officer has shot herself with clinical precision in both feet.