EGN NEWS DESK
The writer and incoming editor of The Washington Post used fraudulently obtained telephone and firm data in newspaper articles as journalists in London, in response to a former colleague, the printed account of a personal investigator and an evaluation of newspaper archives.
Will Lewis, The Post’s writer, assigned one of many articles in 2004 as enterprise editor of The Sunday Times. Another was written by Robert Winnett, whom Mr. Lewis not too long ago introduced as The Post’s subsequent government editor.
The use of deception, hacking and fraud is on the coronary heart of a long-running British newspaper scandal, one which toppled a serious tabloid in 2010 and led to years of lawsuits by celebrities who mentioned that reporters improperly obtained their private paperwork and voice mail messages.
Mr. Lewis has maintained that his solely involvement within the controversy was serving to to root out problematic habits after the actual fact, whereas working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
But a former Sunday Times reporter mentioned on Friday that Mr. Lewis had personally assigned him to put in writing an article in 2004 utilizing telephone data that the reporter understood to have been obtained via hacking.
After that story broke, a British businessman who was the topic of the article mentioned publicly that his data had been stolen. The reporter, Peter Koenig, described Mr. Lewis as a proficient editor — the most effective he had labored with. But as time went on, he mentioned Mr. Lewis modified.
“His ambition outran his ethics,” Mr. Koenig mentioned.
A second article in 2002 carried Mr. Winnett’s byline, and a personal investigator who labored for The Sunday Times later publicly acknowledged utilizing deception to land the supplies.
Both articles had been produced throughout a interval when the newspaper has acknowledged paying the non-public detective explicitly to acquire materials surreptitiously. That would violate the ethics codes of The Post and most American information organizations. The Sunday Times has mentioned repeatedly that it has by no means paid anybody to behave illegally.
A New York Times overview of Mr. Lewis’s profession additionally raised new questions on his choice in 2009, as editor of The Daily Telegraph in Britain, to pay greater than 100,000 kilos for info from a supply. Paying for info is prohibited in most American newsrooms.
In a gathering with Post journalists in November, Mr. Lewis defended the funds, saying that the cash had been put into an escrow account to guard a supply. But the advisor who brokered the deal mentioned in a current interview that there had been no escrow account and that he had doled out the cash to sources himself.
A Washington Post spokeswoman mentioned that Mr. Lewis declined to reply a listing of questions. The paper has beforehand mentioned, “William could be very clear concerning the strains that shouldn’t be crossed, and his monitor file attests to that.” In a collection of discussions with Post journalists this week, Mr. Lewis has mentioned that as writer, his function is to create an atmosphere the place nice journalism can flourish and that he won’t ever intrude.
Mr. Winnett didn’t reply telephone calls or reply to questions despatched by WhatsApp and e-mail. The Post referred inquiries to his spokeswoman, who didn’t reply.
Mr. Lewis praised Mr. Winnett this month in a gathering with Post journalists. “He’s a superb investigative journalist,” Mr. Lewis mentioned. “And he’ll restore an excellent better diploma of investigative rigor to our group.”
Together, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Winnett will lead one of the vital information organizations within the United States, one which has a deep historical past of offering impartial checks on governments and holding the highly effective accountable. Amid newsroom upheaval within the run-up to an election, journalists inside and out of doors The Post have requested whether or not the brand new leaders share their moral basis.
Mr. Lewis was writer of The Wall Street Journal from 2014 to 2020. During his tenure, the paper maintained its repute for top journalistic requirements and gained Pulitzer Prizes, together with for revealing hush-money funds by Donald J. Trump earlier than the 2016 election.
Turmoil at The Post, although, has introduced new scrutiny to Mr. Lewis’s early profession, significantly at The Sunday Times.
It has been nicely documented that reporters at that respected broadsheet newspaper relied on fraudulently obtained materials for articles up via the early 2000s.
But the scandal that adopted that interval primarily centered on tabloid journalists, so Mr. Lewis and Mr. Winnett remained on the periphery of the controversy.
Subterfuge at The Sunday Times
In 2002, Mr. Winnett landed a scoop.
Mercedes was re-releasing the Maybach, a German luxurious automobile that was common within the Nineteen Thirties and that The Sunday Times referred to as “the Nazis’ favourite limousine.” Prominent British figures had been lining as much as place orders. Mr. Winnett had a listing of names, together with a member of the House of Lords, a serious political donor and an insurance coverage trade chief.
The article didn’t say how Mr. Winnett had obtained the names, solely that the individuals in query had been “understood to have positioned orders.”
Many years later, a personal investigator named John Ford publicly revealed his lengthy profession working for The Sunday Times. He mentioned he had rifled via individuals’s rubbish and surreptitiously gained entry to the financial institution, telephone and firm data of British politicians and different public figures.
In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Mr. Ford spoke regretfully about his work for a June 2002 article revealing the Maybach consumers. Mr. Winnett’s article is the one one that matches that description. But as a result of the unique article isn’t available on-line, it has not been linked publicly to him.
The New York Times reviewed the June 9, 2002, article in Factiva, a subscription information database.
In the Guardian interview, Mr. Ford mentioned he had referred to as the Mercedes vendor and, in a pretend accent, claimed to be a German key fob producer who wanted to see a listing of consumers so he might affirm the spellings of their names. The man on the opposite finish of the road was fired after the article ran, he mentioned.
Mr. Ford, who has stopped giving information interviews, declined to remark.
Mr. Lewis turned enterprise editor in 2002, just a few months after the Maybach article ran, and have become Mr. Winnett’s boss.
In 2004, Mr. Lewis pulled one other enterprise reporter apart after the common Tuesday editorial assembly and gave him an project, in response to the reporter, Mr. Koenig.
Mr. Koenig recalled in an interview with The New York Times that Mr. Lewis advised him to look into conversations between two businessmen concerned within the attainable sale of a retail chain. Mr. Koenig mentioned he was given copies of telephone data — he believes by Mr. Lewis himself.
“My understanding on the time was that that they had been hacked,” Mr. Koenig mentioned.
Armed with the data, Mr. Koenig mentioned, he persuaded one of many businessmen, Stuart Rose — who was then the chief government of the retailer Marks & Spencer and is now a member of the House of Lords — to offer him an interview to elucidate the calls.
The June 2004 article by Mr. Koenig accommodates down-to-the minute particulars of Mr. Rose’s telephone calls. The article didn’t say the place the data had come from.
Mr. Koenig mentioned he was virtually sure that Mr. Lewis edited the article himself. It would have been extremely uncommon for some other senior editor to overview enterprise articles, he mentioned.
Mr. Lewis himself wrote a first-person article that very same day about Mr. Rose and his function in a attainable Marks & Spencer deal. In it, Mr. Lewis describes personally getting the tip to look into the deal and refers back to the telephone calls. “I’m advised Rose began Friday, May 7, with a name to his public relations adviser,” Mr. Lewis wrote.
And in a separate article additionally written by Mr. Lewis and printed that day, he takes notice of the exact timing of one other telephone name.
Days later, Marks & Spencer introduced that Mr. Rose’s telephone data had been hacked.
The ‘Dark Arts’
The wrongdoer who obtained the telephone data within the Marks & Spencer case has by no means been publicly recognized. It was broadly reported on the time that somebody had contacted the telephone firm, posed as Mr. Rose and sought his data.
That form of deception, identified in Britain as blagging, would years later turn into central to a scandal that engulfed Mr. Murdoch’s British media empire and uncovered the ways that reporters at his and different Fleet Street tabloids used to invade the privateness of individuals they wrote about.
The phrase “hacking” is commonly used as a shorthand for quite a lot of ways, together with blagging, that turned referred to as British journalism’s “darkish arts.” The strategies are usually unlawful, however British regulation makes an exception for blagging when the data is obtained within the public curiosity.
After The Guardian, after which The New York Times, revealed the extent of such practices at The News of the World in 2010, the controversy compelled Mr. Murdoch to shutter the paper.
Lawsuits adopted, however they targeted virtually completely on the actions of tabloid newspapers. Broadsheets like The Sunday Times remained largely above the fray. Only years later have particulars spilled into public view.
“All senior editors and most reporters at The Sunday Times knew that I obtained unlawful telephone billing information and checking account transactions, virtually each week, for tales,” Mr. Ford mentioned in a 2018 interview with the British information web site Byline Investigates.
In the interview, Mr. Ford mentioned he was paid as much as £40,000 a yr, about $72,000 on the time. John Witherow, then the newspaper’s high editor, who was Mr. Lewis’s boss, acknowledged that the paper had employed Mr. Ford as a blagger for numerous investigations.
“He was employed due to his expertise for impersonation. Is that proper?” Mr. Witherow was requested throughout a 2012 authorities inquiry.
“Sounds prefer it,” the editor replied.
In a later article, Mr. Ford himself wrote that he had thought-about Mr. Winnett an in depth good friend. After Mr. Ford was arrested in 2010 on a blagging-related fraud cost, he mentioned within the article, The Sunday Times paid his authorized charges. Mr. Winnett “was intimately concerned with the association of my authorized protection,” Mr. Ford wrote.
Mr. Ford finally acquired a proper warning, however not a conviction, within the case.
Paying for Information
Mr. Lewis has mentioned little over time concerning the telephone hacking scandal. When he has mentioned it, he has offered himself as somebody who cooperated with the authorities and helped News Corporation root out wrongdoing.
“My function was to place issues proper, and that’s what I did,” he advised the BBC in 2020.
The hacking scandal has roared again into Mr. Lewis’s life not too long ago as he works to reorganize the Post newsroom. His government editor, Sally Buzbee, stop over that plan. Days later, The New York Times revealed that Mr. Lewis had scolded her for overlaying developments in a British telephone hacking lawsuit that named him. Mr. Lewis has denied pressuring Ms. Buzbee.
Then, an NPR reporter revealed that Mr. Lewis had provided an unique interview if he promised to not write concerning the telephone hacking case.
Mr. Lewis has additionally confronted questions on one other scoop that he and Mr. Winnett delivered in ways in which wouldn’t have been thought-about moral in most American newsrooms.
In 2009, whereas Mr. Lewis was editor of The Daily Telegraph, Mr. Winnett revealed that politicians had used authorities expense accounts to spend lavishly. The article ignited a serious political scandal.
The article was based mostly on data that The Telegraph had purchased from a safety advisor for greater than $120,000.
In his assembly with Post journalists in November, Mr. Lewis defended his article. He advised the workers that The Telegraph had spent the cash to assist shield a supply. “I agreed to place cash in escrow for authorized protections,” Mr. Lewis mentioned, in response to The Post.
In an interview with The New York Times this previous week, the safety advisor described a far much less formal association.
“It was not an escrow account,” mentioned the advisor, John Wick. He mentioned that he had collected the cash himself, on behalf of the supply. “I held it and I launched it when and the way I assumed it was wanted.”
Mr. Wick mentioned that he had organized the cope with Mr. Winnett: £10,000 for an opportunity to overview the data, then one other £100,000 for the unique proper to it.
Mr. Wick mentioned he didn’t inform Mr. Winnett or Mr. Lewis what he did with the cash.
Kitty Bennett and Julie Tate contributed analysis.
