NotW editor Myler….who’s next?

Senior staffers stunned, but now ‘expecting more arrests’

__________________________________

Akers team catches ‘confident’ Newscorp on the hop

__________________________________

Suggestion that ‘other evidence’ may have doomed Weatherup

Several senior Newscorp executives and company lawyers descended ‘like vultures’ on James Weatherup’s desk within minutes of being told of the celebrity news editor’s arrest, it was alleged yesterday. It is clear from initial reactions inside Wapping that the management were caught completely off guard by the arrest; but on hearing that Weatherup had been held, the scavengers put all the desk’s contents into several bags.

There is a hint of naughtiness from this paragraph in the Guardian’s coverage of the event this morning:

‘Despite the paper having promised that it would co-operate fully with police inquiries, under the eyes of their legal team, they bagged up notebooks, papers and recording machines and removed them “via our lawyers”, a firm whose identity the publisher refused to confirm.’

The paper is skating on thin ice with its use of the word ‘despite’ there: for any half-awake libel lawyer, there is a suggestion that the executives may have ‘edited’ the bags’ contents before the police arrived. But The Guardian was quick to add, ‘A few hours later, the police arrived and took the bags to Scotland Yard.’ Thus, any changes in the weight of the bags between the Newscorp swoop and the Met’s arrival will not be the subject of conjecture in the coming days.

Last night, Wapping staffers told us they expected further arrests very quickly.

—————————————–

There are several confusing elements within these latest developments. By serving a writ on another national title last Monday, for example,  Newscorp is giving notice that it will not go down without a bitter fight  – and one in which Queensberry Rules will not be required. But beyond that certainty, there remains an enigma – not unusual in this saga. James Weatherup was senior enough to have been a close confidante of James Murdoch – and a lifer with specific expertise in celeb-haunting. Given the vast majority of civil suits have been brought by celebrities, why would the management have been so stunned by his arrest?

Part of the answer is that Weatherup’s name had not figured in any of the civil cases brought to date. But if the police are sure enough to have made an arrest, they obviously have seriously conclusive evidence. This in turn begs a bigger question:

Why were senior executives not expecting Weatherup’s name to be found among the ‘rediscovered’ emails?

It’s an intriguing one, this. And a mystery which might evoke a great deal of doubt should the Akers team not find any references to senior management in the hoard of e’s they now hold.

Having previously told investigators (with whom it was of course fully cooperating) that it had lost the emails en route to India, Newscorp announced their rediscovery on 29th March 2011. The company was informed of Sienna Miller’s action against it during October 2010.

But one former police source suggested last night that perhaps Operation Weeting didn’t use any of the email hoard to gather evidence against James Weatherup in the first place…and that other evidence beyond the mail mountain may have led to Weatherup’s arrest. He told The Slog last night:

“The senior bods being caught on the hop like that feels wrong somehow. It suggests they knew Weatherup’s name wasn’t among the emails. We already know that the Met had tapped Brooks’ phone after the 2003 admission. It’s very likely that they also hacked other journalists’ phones. This raises serious questions about why such taps weren’t acted upon before now. But it could be that Akers thinks the email evidence is tainted”.

While all this is informed speculation, it remains just that – speculation. But today’s Guardian Oped on the affair intriguingly notes that ‘News International executives have been saying privately that they were confident Edmondson and Thurlbeck were the only staffers still working at the paper who were likely to be implicated in hacking….’

What, The Slog wonders, had made them so confident….and now so worried?