LONDON — Andy Coulson, a former tabloid editor in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and later director of communications for Prime Minister David Cameron, was arrested by the Scottish police Wednesday and charged with lying under oath about whether he knew phone hacking was going on at the newspaper he edited, News of the World.
Coulson, 44, is the second high-profile former Murdoch employee to be criminally charged in the hacking scandal, joining Rebekah Brooks, a top Murdoch lieutenant who was arrested in England this month on charges of obstructing justice.
According to British news reports, Coulson was detained at his house in Dulwich, South London, at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, and then driven - escorted by seven Scottish police officers - to a police station in Glasgow. He was questioned throughout the day and formally charged shortly before 10 p.m.
Murdoch closed News of the World last summer amid a scandal over unsavory and illicit reporting practices that has reverberated through Britain’s political, law enforcement and media establishments.
After years of denying that phone hacking went on at News of the World, News International, the British newspaper arm of Murdoch’s media empire, finally acknowledged that the practice was widespread and has paid millions of dollars to settle dozens of civil cases brought by hacking victims.
The charge against Coulson stems from a case heard at Scottish High Court in Glasgow in 2010 that involved a Scottish politician charged with having committed perjury in testimony at an earlier libel trial. Defending himself against the perjury charge, the politician, Tommy Sheridan, claimed that News of the World had illegally intercepted voice mail messages from his cellphone account.
Coulson was called as a witness in that case. He was presented with records showing that Sheridan’s name, phone number and telephone PIN code were written in a notebook belonging to Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who worked extensively for News of the World and who pleaded guilty in 2007 to hacking voice mail messages on the paper’s behalf.
Coulson expressed surprise. “I’m saying that I had absolutely no knowledge of it,” he said on the stand, speaking of Sheridan’s assertion that Mulcaire had hacked his phone. “I certainly didn’t instruct anyone to do anything at the time, or anything else that was untoward.”
Coulson also denied that he had condoned or even known about phone hacking or other illegal reporting techniques while he was editor of News of the World.
“I don’t accept there was a culture of phone hacking at News of the World,” he testified.
After Mulcaire pleaded guilty to phone hacking - along with the paper’s royal correspondent, Clive Goodman - Coulson resigned as editor, saying he had to take ultimate responsibility for what happened. But he maintained that Goodman was a “rogue reporter” and that phone hacking at the paper had not extended beyond him.
He repeated that claim while testifying at the 2010 trial.
“There was a very unfortunate, to put it mildly, case involving Clive Goodman,” Coulson told the court.
Coulson’s testimony was consistent with other comments he has made, including in the House of Commons, about phone hacking, always denying he knew about it.
But lying to Parliament and committing perjury in court are two different things. Sheridan, who was ultimately convicted in his own perjury case, was sentenced to three years in prison, and served one year before being released.
After he left News of the World, Coulson was hired to be the Conservative Party’s chief of communications by Cameron, who said he believed that Coulson was telling the truth about phone hacking and who stood by him even as it became increasingly clear that the practice had been endemic at News of the World.
Coulson followed the victorious Conservative Party to Downing Street after the 2010 election, but resigned from his government post in January 2011, saying the growing hacking scandal was distracting him.
Last July, he was arrested and questioned by the police in England on suspicion of phone hacking and of illegally paying officials for information. He has not yet heard whether he will be charged with those crimes; England and Scotland have different criminal justice systems, and arrests in England do not necessarily lead to formal charges.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 05/31/2012