Just one example of the culture of impunity

In a mere 11 years, Rebekah Brooks, nee Wade, climbed from secretary to editor of The News of the World; she reached that pinnacle at the age of 31. She not only survived but dominated the tough, testosterone-fuelled culture of the British tabloids, first at the News of the World and then, for six years, at The Sun; she put the fear of God into hundreds of journalists working under her, while louis vuitton womens sunglasses 2012 charming the all-but-uncharmable Rupert Murdoch. And his son James. And his wife Wendi. And three prime ministers. And, even more remarkably, two of their wives: Cherie Blair and Sarah Brown were both Rebekah's besties in their day. Throughout her interrogation at the Leveson inquiry she was cool, occasionally testy, but never for a second intimidated. Though she had been forced to walk the plank by News International, there was no hint of disloyalty. As for power – well, that of course resided in the readers of The Sun, not in her, nor in her boss Rupert. She'd never thought in terms of power. And when, at last, after months of anticipation, the axe fell, was she supplicatory? Was there the faintest hint of regret or apology? Certainly not. There was haughty disdain for her prosecutors: " ... an expensive sideshow, a waste of public money as a result of a weak and unjust decision". And sheer, unmitigated fury: "I cannot express my anger enough that those closest to me have been dragged into this unfairly." Brought before the House of Commons Committee on Culture last year at the height of the firestorm about the hacking of Milly Dowler's telephone, her boss Rupert famously declared it the most humble day of his life. But this lady is not for humbling. And in one way she is surely right. Though they might carry, in theory, a life sentence, the charges against Rebekah and Charlie Brooks, and sundry personal assistants, chauffeurs and aids, hardly go to the heart of the matter. They were caught, just last year, attempting to make off with seven boxes of files from the News International building; and of secretly chucking a laptop and sundry other paraphernalia into a bin near the Brooks' London home; we assume (but of course do not know) that all this stuff had something to do with the great phone-hacking cover-up which Brooks and her colleagues at News International had been engaged in for a decade. Very naughty, if true. And banal, too. After all, just the other day, HSU national president Michael Williamson was allegedly found in an underground car park with black plastic garbage bags full of papers while the boys and girls in blue were prowling the corridors above him. It's a natural instinct to bury, allegedly, the alleged dirt. But even if the defendants are found guilty, suits for men 2012 months or years down the track, that will not tell us what we really want to know: and as Rebekah Brooks rightly said, what we want to know is about her, not her husband, her assistant, her chauffeur, her bodyguard or her bottle-washer. She was the editor of The News of the World at the time of the hacking into Milly Dowler's voicemail - and literally hundreds of others, it seems, from the deputy prime minister's to Hugh Grant's. She was the editor of The Sun when it was apparently shelling out many tens, and perhaps hundreds of thousands, of pounds to policemen, and army officers, and officials up and down the Whitehall hierarchy. She was the CEO of News International for some of the years when it obstinately, and in the face of mountains of evidence already in its own possession, insisted that one rogue reporter had been engaged in a practice which, it now seems, was routine and widespread. The egregious Paul McMullan, he of the strawberry birthmark and the devastating frankness, who famously declared that privacy is for paedophiles (and Rebekah waged a furious campaign as editor of the News of the World against paedophiles), told Four Corners' Sarah Ferguson last year: Rebekah Brooks, James Murdoch and Andy Coulson are saying, "I have clean hands. It was the reporters. I didn't know what they were doing. I'm innocent. It was them. Send them to jail not me." Why don't you stand up and tell the truth and say, "Sometimes, you know, if you want to catch a politician with his trousers round his ankles you've got to hack his phone. We did it. It's justified." Ferguson's report contained another nugget that only the more assiduous followers of the saga would already have come across. In 2002, while Rebekah Brooks was editor of the News of the World, the police reopened an investigation into the brutal murder, back in the 1980s, of a man who'd been the business partner of Jonathan Rees, one of the more thuggish private eyes employed by Fleet Street papers. Rees was the main suspect. By 2002, Rees was serving a seven year sentence for conspiring to plant cocaine on an innocent woman and get her sent to prison, because she was involved in a custody battle with one of Rees's clients. Another major client of Jonathan Rees was the News of the World, and in the 1990s a certain Alex Marunchak, one of that newspaper's most senior journalists, was running a business from Rees's premises. The policeman who was conducting the murder cheap burberry inquiry, and his wife, and their children, soon found themselves under surveillance. His wife – also a police officer - told Sarah Ferguson: I saw a van at the end of my driveway parked up and what was I suspect a camera lens looking back ... However hardened you are as a police officer, when you become part of the case and your children are involved, it's hard to actually explain how frightening that is. The detective got his colleagues to stop the van on the freeway. The driver turned out to be Alex Marunchak. Called to Scotland Yard and accosted with these facts, the editor of The News of the World seemed untroubled. Sarah Ferguson reports: By all accounts Rebekah Brooks offered no explanation. All she had to say was that Marunchak was a great reporter doing great work for the paper. Not only did Alex Marunchak continue to work at a senior level for the News of the World, on his release from prison Jonathan Rees was again hired by the paper. Just one example of the culture of impunity, the sense that the rules did not apply to them, that seems to have surrounded News International's newspapers in those years. And the flip-side of that brazen lack of caution was the fear that they were able to instil in policemen, and politicians, and public officials. As British Labour MP Tom Watson told the House of Commons in 2010: The truth is that, in this House we are all, in our own way, scared of the Rebekah Brookses of this world. But in truth, there are not many Rebekah Brookses. She is a one-off. What did she know? When did she know it? What did she demand, and order, and threaten? What did she cover up, and obfuscate, and ignore? Those are the questions that many, many Britons – especially the members of the 'chattering classes' so derided by Rupert Murdoch, his columnists and editors over the years – would love to see answered. You do wonder when, if ever, those arrested – sometimes in dramatic dawn raids with plenty of sound and fury – will actually face charges that relate to the substance of the scandal and its cover-up. Of course, the shenanigans that took place in the Burberry handbags outlet, cheap burberry bags on sale, 60% off. News of the World building last July may have been intended to prevent such charges ever being laid, at least against Rebekah Brooks. But compared to those matters, last year's shenanigans are indeed a sideshow.