In her seventh day providing testimony at the News Corp phone hacking trial, former editor Rebekah Brooks said that she consented to paying the legal fees of phone hacker Glenn Mulcaire to keep silent about naming reporters in a court case filed by Max Clifford. The Guardian said that the public relations firm lodged a complaint against the British unit of News Corp, News International. Brooks clarified, however, that she was not involved in the decision to pay Mulcaire in 2009.
"We were opposing that order - again this is in the context of a civil liability - on the basis that he was an unreliable witness going forward naming names, and both financially and reputationally we didn't want that to happen. The view was that he could say anyone or anything. The list of potential civil claimants was growing sideways if you like. Our decision at News International was to settle as confidentially as possible to prevent further damage reputationally and financially," Brooks had told the court while under examination by Jonathan Laidlaw QC or her defense counsel.
She said concerns about Mulcaire arose when a police disclosure revealed that the notes of the phone hacker included the names of other people aside from the five victims named in a 2008 proceeding. The said victims included Clifford and sports agent Sky Andrews.
Brooks also said while being chief executive of News International in 2009, News Corp, who publishes News of the World and the Sun, had a falling out with Clifford. Les Hinton, who took over PR duties for News Corp, issued a ban on working with Clifford.
When the defense team asked whether the civil case brought by Clifford had caused her concern over the possibility that hacking had took place on the shuttered News of The World at the time when she was editor, she declined. The Guardian noted that Brooks edited the tabloid from 2000 to 2003.
