Editor James Harding apologises at Leveson inquiry for events that led to identification of anonymous police blogger NightJack
The editor of the Times, James Harding, has admitted that evidence of his paper's involvement in email hacking was previously withheld from the high court.
In a lengthy and, at times, dramatic cross-examination before the Leveson inquiry, the editor of Rupert Murdoch's main title apologised to Mr Justice Eady, who turned down an anonymity injunction sought in 2009 by the victim of the hacking – an anonymous police blogger known as NightJack.
Harding claimed he did not know of the circumstances that led to NightJack's exposure or even that the Times was fighting the injunction until after the case had begun, but conceded that he failed to alert Eady of the possible hacking once he had been informed. Despite subsequently deciding to publish NightJack's identity, Harding said he discovered the full extent of the intrusion only in the last 10 days.
Confronted by apparently incriminating internal emails about his paper's behaviour, he told a grave Lord Justice Leveson: "When you look back at all this, it's terrible."
Harding repeatedly said he lacked memory of the details of what occurred at crucial meetings at the paper's Wapping offices, in east London, held to discuss how to handle the fact that a young Times reporter, Patrick Foster, had hacked into an email account to identify and expose the award-winning police blogger. He told the inquiry he had been distracted during the NightJack affair, first by an attempted political coup against Gordon Brown and later by the Iranian elections.
Despite being the editor, he had been unaware of all the facts until very recently, he said. He blamed the paper's then lawyer, Alastair Brett, for embarking on a high court legal battle without his knowledge.
In 2009, Brett successfully fought off a bid for an anonymity injunction by the NightJack blogger, the Lancashire detective Richard Horton, without informing either the court or his own QC that the email hacking had occurred.
Harding said Brett's explanation for his silence was that the knowledge was confidential, legally privileged, and would incriminate Foster if it were revealed. There was no defence available of public interest under the Computer Misuse Act, even though Foster believed he had been acting in the public interest.
The court and Horton's lawyers were falsely told the reporter had simply "deduced" the blogger's identity from a jigsaw of publicly available information.
The inquiry heard this attempt to piece together public information instead came later after a suggestion from Brett, to whom the reporter had been sent by his news editor, for confidential legal advice. The inhouse lawyer "tore a strip off" the reporter and told him he could only pursue the story by showing the information was availably legitimately. In an email, Foster recorded: "Alastair onside."
Harding admitted, under repeated questioning by the inquiry counsel, Robert Jay QC, that a subsequent internal discussion of how to handle Foster's hacked information had taken place on 5 June 2009. This immediately followed the hearing before Eady, but came before the judge made his formal ruling that no breach of confidence had occurred and publication of the story would be therefore allowed. Horton's lawyers had been unable to prove their strong suspicions that illegal interception had been to blame for his unmasking.
Harding then took the decision to go ahead and publish the story in the Times, regardless of its origins. He did not take any steps to disclose the true facts to Eady and the high court.
The inquiry was told that fresh litigation by Horton against the Times might now take place. Horton is understood to have engaged solicitor Mark Lewis, whose pursuit of the News of the World on behalf of phone-hacking victims brought much of the scandal to light. Legal sources said Horton would probably have a claim for damages against the Times for the original alleged breach of confidence. Harding's apologetic testimony had suggested such a claim was likely to be settled amicably for considerably less than £100,000.
Harding was recalled to Leveson after the revelation that he had not volunteered full details of the hacking affair during his previous appearance on the witness stand. He subsequently turned over to the inquiry a string of internal emails from executives and lawyers, which he said had only been unearthed in the last 10 days.
The editor declared he was "as shocked as you" at the nature of the legal correspondence. "I am sure Mr Horton and many other people expect better of the Times and so do I. So, on behalf of the paper, I apologise," he told Lord Justice Leveson.
He was asked to explain an email of 14 June between the paper's managing editor and the lawyer, in advance of a discussion with Harding over whether to expose NightJack. It described how the two executives were in "broad agreement" about how to proceed, but were worried that, should the reporter's "misdemeanour" become known, the paper might stand accused of complicity in illegal hacking. The two debated whether Eady's positive judgment, saying there was no public interest in allowing a police officer to conceal disciplinary misbehaviour, would get the Times "off the hook".
Harding insisted that he never knew "exactly what [Foster] had done". Jay suggested that Harding must have known the full truth by the time of publication about the hacking. But Harding responded: "It came to me all after the fact." He said: "The judgment I came to was that I decided to publish." He said that at an earlier discussion "we probably didn't drill down properly into what Foster had done".
He said that if Foster had originally revealed to the editor what he had done he would have "told him to abandon the story".
Foster later worked as a freelance reporter for the Guardian and the Telegraph.
Brett declined to comment. Friends of the lawyer said that Harding's account of his behaviour was accurate, but the newspaper lawyer had been placed in an impossible position