Andy Coulson: hacked out of Number 10
Andy Coulson’s resignation as David Cameron’s communications chief is the latest, and almost certainly not the last, twist in a story that began in 2005. Channel 4 News looks at where it all started.
On 13 November 2005 Clive Goodman, then News of the World royal correspondent, published a piece about Prince William. The piece contained information which only a small number of people knew about. The paper’s editor at the time was Andy Coulson.
It emerged Goodman and his associate, private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, had hacked into voicemail messages to obtain the information. On 26 January 2007 both men were jailed after pleading guilty to intercepting phone messages.
On the same day Andy Coulson, who had replaced his friend Rebekah Wade as News of the World editor in 2003, announced his resignation. Six months later he became communications director for the Conservative Party.
Coulson has never admitted to knowing about the practice of phone hacking during his tenure at News of the World. But since 2007 stories have continued to surface about the practice. His boss, David Cameron, was forced to say in July 2009 that he believed “in giving people a second chance”.
After the general election in May 2010, Coulson became director of communications at Downing Street. Several months later, in September of that year, the New York Times published a piece in which Sean Hoare, a former News of the World reporter and Coulson friend, announced that Coulson had “actively encouraged” him to hack phone messages.
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In October 2010 the Channel 4 programme Dispatches broadcast an interview with a former colleague of Coulson, who said he knew about hacking and himself listened to tapes when he was News of the World editor.
Towards the end of last year the name of Ian Edmondson, a senior executive at News of the World, began to appear in stories. It subsequently transpired that on 17 November a high court judge had ordered Glenn Mulcaire to state whether or not he had received instructions from Edmonson to hack the mobile phones of publicist Max Clifford and his assistant (Mulcaire originally admitted to hacking Clifford’s phone in his 2007 trial).
In December 2010 the legal team of the actress Sienna Miller lodged a document claiming that Edmondson had told Glenn Mulcaire to intercept her voicemail and that of actor Jude Law.
I think in life sometimes it’s right to give someone a second chance. David Cameron on Andy Coulson
On 17 January of this year, Mulcaire submitted a statement to the high court stating that Ian Edmondson had asked him to access the mobile phone messages of sports and celebrity agent Sky Andrew.
The following day, in a separate action, the high court heard that Mulcaire’s notebook contained the number that sports commentator Andy Gray used to access his voicemail.
Only last week David Cameron reaffirmed his support for Andy Coulson. Echoing his words from 2009, he told BBC Radio’s Today programme: “I gave him a second chance. I think in life sometimes it’s right to give someone a second chance.”
Coulson’s resignation announcement today casts a questioning light not only on the prime minister and the government, but also on Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation as it manoeuvres to take control of BSkyB. The shockwaves from Clive Goodman’s 2005 article continue to reverberate.