Guilty Pleas Disclosed in Phone-Hacking Trial

Updated Oct. 30, 2013 4:19 p.m. ETLONDON—Opening arguments in a closely watched criminal trial involving former News Corp NWSA -0.63% News Corp Cl A U.S.: Nasdaq $17.35 -0.11 -0.63% Oct. 30, 2013 4:00 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 8.00M U.S.: Nasdaq $17.36 +0.01 +0.06% Oct. 30, 2013 6:59 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 28,571 P/E Ratio N/A Market Cap $10.19 Billion Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee $370,458 10/30/13 Guilty Pleas Disclosed in Phon… 10/28/13 U.K. Editors’ Phone-Hacking Tr… 10/26/13 News Corp Phone-Hacking Trial … More quote details and news » NWSA in Your Value Your Change Short position editors in the U.K. kicked off Wednesday with British prosecutors saying three former journalists at the company and a private investigator had already pleaded guilty to illegal mobile-phone voice-mail interception, or phone hacking.
The disclosure—the first public confirmation of these guilty pleas—represented the opening salvos by prosecutors as they began laying out their case against former News Corp executives Rebekah Brooks, Andrew Coulson and six other defendants. Mr. Coulson also served as a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron before resigning in 2011 amid the phone-hacking probe.
Ms. Brooks, a former tabloid editor and onetime protégé of News Corp Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch, has emerged as the focal point of the case. Prosecutors spent some of the first day of what is expected to be two days of opening statements describing what they said was her central role in phone hacking and bribery efforts at the News Corp publications she edited.

Former News Corp executive Rebekah Brooks at the Old Bailey on Wednesday Getty Images

Ms. Brooks has pleaded not guilty to charges involving alleged phone hacking, bribery of public officials and obstruction of justice.
She served as the top editor at the now-defunct News of the World and then at its sister publication, the Sun tabloid. She later became chief executive of News Corp’s U.K. newspaper unit. She stepped down from that role in 2011 amid the probe into phone hacking.
Mr. Coulson has also pleaded not guilty to three charges related to hacking and paying public officials in exchange for information.
At London’s central criminal court, or the Old Bailey, prosecutors described what they say was a long-running conspiracy at News of the World to hack phones and bribe officials in the pursuit of scoops, and a bribery conspiracy at the Sun. In court Wednesday, prosecutors also detailed allegations that Ms. Brooks approved payments of large sums of money to public officials in exchange for information while serving as editor of the Sun.
Specifically, they accused her of approving payments of around £40,000 ($64,100) to a U.K. Ministry of Defense official. Turning to Mr. Coulson, prosecutors alleged that as editor of the News of the World, he approved payments to police officers in exchange for telephone books containing numbers for royal-family members.
Prosecutors also disclosed that Neville Thurlbeck, Greg Miskiw and James Weatherup —former journalists at the News of the World—had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hack phones, before the start of the current trial. Those pleas hadn’t been disclosed to the public, but prosecutors are expected to now use them in their case against Ms. Brooks, Mr. Coulson and the other defendants.
Prosecutors said a fourth person— Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who worked extensively for the News of the World to help it gather information—pleaded guilty to hacking the mobile phone of Milly Dowler, a teenager who went missing in 2002 and was later found dead.
Reports that News of the World had hacked Ms. Dowler’s phone—which surfaced in a 2011 report in the Guardian newspaper—triggered widespread public outrage over what had been long-simmering phone hacking allegations. Soon after, News Corp shut the News of the World, and Mr. Murdoch apologized to the Dowler family.
Speaking to the jury about the defendants on trial, “What you’ve got to decide, really, is how much did [they] know about what was going on in their newspaper, and how much did they know about what was being published in their newspaper, and where it came from,” lead prosecutor Andrew Edis said Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for News Corp’s U.K. newspaper unit declined to comment Wednesday. News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, was part of a larger company also called News Corp. that in June split in two, spinning off its television, movie and entertainment businesses into a new company, 21st Century Fox.
Prosecutors also alleged that Ms. Brooks and her former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter, conspired to remove seven boxes of Ms. Brooks’s notebooks from the News International archive in July 2011, several days after allegations about the hacking of Ms. Dowler’s phone were made public. The boxes haven’t been recovered.
Ms. Carter has pleaded not guilty to a single charge of conspiring to obstruct justice.
Mr. Edis, the lead prosecutor, said the News of the World paid Mr. Mulcaire £100,000 a year to hack phones in pursuit of information for stories. Mr. Mulcaire also showed News of the World journalists how to hack phones themselves, Mr. Edis said.
He also alleged that another defendant in the current trial, Ian Edmondson, a former senior News of the World editor, tasked Mr. Mulcaire with hacking phones on multiple occasions. Mr. Edmondson has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to hack phones.
The phone-hacking saga first surfaced in 2005, when Prince William’s staff first alerted authorities to the possibility that the News of the World had hacked phones connected to the prince, sparking a police inquiry. An initial police investigation resulted in the prosecution of Mr. Mulcaire and the paper’s royal-family correspondent, Clive Goodman. Both were sentenced to prison in 2007 after pleading guilty to illegally intercepting phone messages. Mr. Goodman is another defendant in the current trial, facing charges of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office. He has pleaded not guilty to that charge.
For many years, News Corp executives maintained that phone hacking was limited to Messrs. Mulcaire and Goodman. In court Wednesday, Mr. Edis said the prosecution would show otherwise.
“This inquiry has proven conclusively that that is not true,” he said, referring to the guilty pleas that Messrs. Thurlbeck, Weatherup, Miskiw and Mulcaire have all made in relation to phone hacking
Write to Jenny Gross at jenny.gross@wsj.com and Jeanne Whalen at jeanne.whalen@wsj.com

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