Email trail

M'learned friends are increasingly in the Hackgate spotlight.   News International say Harbottle & Lewis are now free to talk about their investigations of News of The World emails, conducted by Lawrence Abramson back in 2007.  This was his letter to News International lawyer, Jon Chapman, at the end of May that year, and presented as "evidence" of a clean bill of health to the Culture Select Committee for its report published in February 2010.

Re Clive Goodman


We have on your instructions reviewed the emails to which you have provided access from the accounts of:


Andy Coulson, Stuart Kuttner, Ian Edmondson, Clive Goodman, Neil Wallis, Jules Stenson.


I can confirm that we did not find anything in those emails which appeared to us to be reasonable evidence that Clive Goodman's illegal actions were known about and supported by both or either of Andy Coulson, the Editor, and Neil Wallis, the Deputy Editor, and/or that Ian Edmondson, the News Editor, and others were carrying out similar illegal procedures.


Please let me know if we can be of any further assistance. 

You don't have to be a lawyer to see the narrow nature of the question asked - tied just to Clive Goodman - and the range of emails supplied.   Nothing from Rebekah Wade/Brooks, Alex Marunchak, Greg Miskiw, Glenn Mulcaire, Ross Hall, Neville Thurlbeck, James Weatherup, Tom Crone or Jon Chapman himself - and no indication of the period of the email correspondence.

Yet Will Lewis apparently sent the same stuff to Hickman & Rose earlier this year. In May they called in former DPP Lord MacDonald, now back as a barrister in private practice, and he reported in June that they were indicative of criminal behaviour (not necessarily the question asked by Jon Chapman of Harbottle & Lewis), and should be passed to the police. On June 20, the dossier was passed to Cressida Dick.

Another firm may be asked to comment soon. Burton & Copeland were brought into News International by Andy Coulson, and over a nine-month period apparently reviewed financial records and 2,500 emails.  Again, the question they were asked to answer may have been rather narrow.

• Lawrence Abramson left Harbottle & Lewis last June, and now works for Fladgate. His previous claim to fame was to win royalties for Procol Harum organist Matthew Fisher, who wanted co-composing rights for "A White Shade of Pale" alongside Gary Brooker and Keith Reid.  
• Procol Harum looks like Latin but isn't.  If it had been Procul Harum, my old dad said it would have meant "far away from these female things".