In August this year the Upper Tribunal dismissed an appeal by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) of a prior ruling that he must disclose the names of certain journalists who appeared on a list 305 names seized by the ICO during a raid in 2003 on the home of private investigator Steve Whittamore. The raid was part of “Operation Motorman”, an investigation which forms part of the background to the various civil and criminal proceedings generated by the phone-hacking scandals, and to the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry.
The names which have been ordered to be disclosed have now been provided by the ICO to the requester, the clearly indefatigable Chris Colenso-Dunne. Chris has kindly given the list to me, and I make it available in the attachment below. One name stands out in particular: Rebekah Wade (as she then was), now Brooks, who has always denied knowledge of the phone-hacking which took place while she was editor of the now defunct News of the World (and who was, of course, acquitted in 2014 of conspiring to hack phones when editor of that paper and of making corrupt payments to public officials when editor of The Sun, as well as of all other charges).
It is important to be aware, as the Upper Tribunal said, that presence on the list means nothing more than that the journalists in question
had commissioned Mr Whittamore to obtain information… The information did not carry with it any assertion as to the actual or alleged commission of any crime by those journalists [para 38]
No doubt the list will generate further comment, though.
[this post was edited to remove a paragraph where I’d mistakenly taken the list to mean that Wade was working for “Femail” at the time]
The views in this post (and indeed all posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
