now let’s get into the blackmail angle shall we

NB: there was another senior cop being blackmailed as well:

It was also claimed by lawyer Mark Lewis that former assistant commissioner Andy Hayman and another senior married Met colleague were unwilling to fully investigate the phone hacking, fearing the paper would expose them for allegedly cheating on their wives. The other unnamed senior married Met officer is alleged to have had a fling with a junior member of staff. (Mirror, Jul 8)

Was top cop who failed to nail NotW compromised?
Ian Gallagher, Mail on Sunday, Jul 10 2011

Late one night in Aug 2006, Britain’s top anti-terrorist officer, Andy Hayman, was photographed leaving a City pub with a married blonde civil servant. It was an innocent enough picture, though the pair’s friendship had been causing disquiet among Metropolitan Police chiefs for some time. Neither party commented at the time, however, and speculation about their intriguing liaison quickly fizzled out. But in the light of what is now known about the various goings-on at the News of the World, the photograph has assumed a greater significance and raises new questions about the newspaper’s symbiotic relationship with the Metropolitan Police. When the photograph eventually surfaced in Dec 2007, married father-of-two Hayman had already left his £180,000/yr job, resigning hours before Channel 4 News accused him of exchanging 400 texts and phone calls with the woman, Nikki Redmond, which it claimed amounted to ‘inappropriate behaviour.’ At the time she worked for the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The picture was taken while he headed the much-criticised original phone-hacking inquiry which led to the jailing of News of the World Royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire in 2007. What has hung over Hayman ever since is the allegation that he did not pursue his inquiries vigorously enough, that the Met was too accepting of News International’s defence that phone hacking was limited to a ‘rogue reporter.’ And it didn’t help his cause when he later took a job as a columnist on the Times, part of the same stable as the News of the World. Since Jan 2009, he has written 75 columns for the paper, and is reportedly paid £10,000/yr. In testimony submitted to Parliament, Mark Lewis, the lawyer at the centre of the hacking scandal, goes further. He suggests that Hayman was unwilling to investigate phone-hacking because he feared his relationship with Redmond would be exposed by the News of the World. He wrote:

At the relevant time, Hayman had reason to fear he was a target of Glenn Mulcaire and the News of the World. It became public knowledge that throughout the period of the investigation into voicemail hacking, Hayman was involved in a controversial relationship with a woman who worked for the Independent Police Complaints Commission and was claiming expenses.

Hayman has defended the original inquiry, insisting he assigned his ‘best detectives’ and left ‘no stone unturned.’ He plans to issue another robust counter-attack when he appears before MPs next week. Lewis’s claims, meanwhile, raise questions about what the News of the World knew of the police chief’s friendship with Redmond and what, if anything, it did with that information. Certainly speculation had been rife on Fleet Street for much of 2006 and had very probably reached the ears of the News of the World. In fact, sources claim freelance photographers had been instructed by the newspaper to keep a watch on Hayman. Photographers from other agencies did the same. All discovered very quickly that the police officer and Redmond, then unidentified, were meeting regularly at bars and restaurants in London but were scrupulously careful about being seen together. Until, that is, they let their guard down after leaving the Boisdale of Bishopgate pub near Liverpool Street Station in Aug 2006. It was during this month Hayman’s team arrested Clive Goodman. The picture, which was taken by a London-based agency which had been commissioned to watch Hayman by the People newspaper, was never published at the time because no one knew the identity of Hayman’s companion. But when Redmond was unmasked by Channel 4 the following year, photographers renewed their attempts to sell it. One picture agency executive said the News of the World suggested to them that it couldn’t ‘touch that story.’ The executive said:

We later heard that they had other photographers watching Hayman.

The picture of the pair was eventually published by the People in Dec 2007. There is no evidence to link the News of the World to either that picture or another one of the couple taken by a picture agency two months earlier. However, it remains a fact that it was common knowledge in Fleet Street that Hayman’s personal life may have had the potential to compromise the phone-hacking investigation. So what did the News of the World know of his friendship with Redmond, and did the paper give Hayman cause to fear exposure, as Mark Lewis suggests?

Whatever the truth, the company’s admission of liability in phone-hacking cases is an embarrassment for the police. It has cast light, too, on what has been described as Scotland Yard’s cosy relationship with News International. Earlier this year it was disclosed that senior Metropolitan Police officers enjoyed private dinners with News of the World editors at the same time as the force was responsible for investigating the phone-hacking scandal. It prompted concern that the Yard’s handling of the scandal may have been compromised by a desire to avoid alienating the newspaper. In Sep 2006, the Met’s then deputy commissioner, Paul Stephenson, dined with the News of the World’s then deputy editor, Neil Wallis. This was only a month after the arrest of Clive Goodman. At the time detectives were still investigating whether other journalists or executives were involved in hacking. There are other links between the Met and News International. Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens wrote a column for the News of the World, while his successor Sir Ian Blair also enjoyed good relations with News International. In 2005 his son Joshua undertook work experience on the Sun, the News of the World’s sister paper. Last week former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord Macdonald was asked to ‘examine his conscience’ after accepting a job advising the News of the World over the hacking scandal. The role sparked anger among some MPs amid fears of a conflict of interest. Labour’s Paul Farrelly said:

The former DPP should not only be invited to examine his ethics and his conscience, but also his record in this because the DPP is equally culpable in failing to get to the bottom of this affair.