Former U.K. Prime Minister says Bezos should reconsider 'Washington Post' publisher

Gordon Brown, the U.K. former prime minister, believes that Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids hacked into his mobile phone voicemails for years while he was a top government official. That Murdoch's journalists used deception to acquire his private financial documents. And that they got a hospital staffer to secretly pass along details of his young son’s medical condition.

“It was simply to embarrass me and if possible, humiliate me,” Brown tells NPR in a telephone interview this week from his home in Scotland. “But I’ve been more concerned about ordinary members of the public, I’ll be honest, who should not expect that their private lives are intruded upon. And I cannot allow that situation to continue under the banner of a free press.”

There is bad blood between Brown and Murdoch. The media mogul supported Brown when he became prime minister in 2007. Then his tabloids withdrew their support and gave it to his rival. Later, Murdoch blamed Brown for tanking the billionaire's effort to acquire full control of the satellite TV giant Sky.

Now, newly public evidence presented in court suggests just how deep the animosity ran. It shows that in 2011, a top Murdoch official — under questioning by police — blamed Brown for the company’s deletion of millions of emails that could have held evidence of such tabloid abuses. That’s a double outrage, Brown says.

“I felt this was an attempt to incriminate me as a cover up for a crime that they were committing,” Brown says. “And that’s why I want the police to investigate it.”

Police to revisit what happened 13 years ago

This week, Scotland Yard confirmed it has opened a preliminary inquiry into Brown’s allegations of obstruction of justice and lying to police by that Murdoch media official. His name is Will Lewis; he is now the publisher and chief executive of The Washington Post. A special team of criminal investigators will assess whether a full-fledged investigation is warranted.

Lewis is not named as a defendant in any of the civil cases stemming from the tabloids’ actions, and has not been charged with any crime. He has broadly denied any wrongdoing, while declining to comment further.

Brown points to the Washington Post’s slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” and offers a warning to Lewis’ current boss, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Brown asks whether a newspaper publisher who is credibly accused of obstruction of justice can continue.

“I think the Washington Post’s owner has got to look very carefully at whether this is the right message to send out to the readers, of the ethics of The Washington Post,” Brown says. “You’ve got to ask very serious questions about the newspaper itself and what it wants to do in the future.”

A scandal that stretches back years

It’s a new twist in a years-long story of criminal allegations — and investigations — involving News UK, Murdoch’s British newspaper division. In 2015, the British Crown Prosecution Service said of News UK, “There are legitimate reasons for companies to have an email deletion policy. In this case, there is no evidence to suggest that email deletion was undertaken in order to pervert the course of justice."

News UK has denied Brown’s allegations of hacking and willful destruction of evidence.

“Mr. Brown has only seen partial information which has emerged from civil litigation,” a corporate spokesperson said in a statement. She noted that the former prime minister doesn’t have access to all of the material News UK has presented in court because he is not suing News UK.

Police notes made public this week have given ballast to Brown’s allegations, however.

A parade of payments exceeding $1.5 billion

News UK has paid out more than $1.5 billion to others who have filed suit over illegal invasions of privacy by its tabloids. Many of those who have settled with the tabloids are under non-disclosure agreements.

But over the intervening years, much new evidence has come to light through civil cases involving Prince Harry, Hugh Grant, and assorted prominent politicians, celebrities, and crime victims. Though News UK settled cases with some litigants in recent months, including Grant and a former government Cabinet minister, many are still ongoing.

Brown pointed to those hacking victims who were the relatives of those killed in terror strikes or violent crimes.

“You have the intrusion into people's civil liberties at a time when families are most vulnerable and are experiencing tragedy and heartache in their lives,” says Brown.

Critical emails went missing

Lawyers for litigants have previously argued in court that News UK gave police a hard drive that couldn’t have belonged to News UK chief executive Rebekah Brooks and that it withheld her emails from another hard drive.

In the latest instance, lawyers for former Member of Parliament Tom Watson alleged earlier this week that Lewis “fabricated a fake security threat” to explain the mass deletions. Brown tells NPR that Lewis undertook, in his view, “a deliberate plan” to erase evidence and to blame him instead.

In early 2011, Lewis told the company’s chief tech officer he had the “green light” to begin “migration” of its email system. Millions upon millions of emails were destroyed. Many of them could not later be recovered.

When police investigators learned of the mass deletions in a July 2011 meeting with the chief tech officer, they pulled Lewis into the conference room too, according to the contemporaneous police notes made public this week. Lewis told police they had received “a warning from a source” that Watson had obtained Brooks’ emails from a company staffer - later amended to a former staffer.

“Then the source came back,” Lewis explained, according to the police notes, “and the emails had definitely been passed and that it was controlled by Gordon Brown. This added to our anxieties.” Brown and Watson were allies and friends within the Labour Party, while Watson had been a key Parliamentary critic of News UK’s operations.

Lewis said that the company did not confront Watson over “his handling of stolen [News UK] data,” according to the police notetaker. But, Lewis said Watson, “has been remarkably well-informed on this.”

But no data was shown to be stolen. A consultant hired by News UK in 2011 had found no evidence of any such breach. Other than a memo from its chief tech officer just before a huge wave of email deletions, News UK has not offered any evidence that the threat or even the source of that tip exists, though it says the warning was credible and serious.

It “is clearly a story that is completely fabricated,” says Brown. “No policeman has ever tried to interview me on this allegation that has been made that would have incriminated me.”

The News UK chief tech officer, Paul Cheesbrough, is now a high-ranking executive at Murdoch’s TV giant, Fox Corp. A corporate spokesperson declined comment on behalf of Cheesbrough and the company.

Allegations over Lewis’ role have surfaced in civil court proceedings against News UK at least four times over the past eight months; Bezos offered a measured note of support for Lewis in late spring as NPR and other news outlets reported on the ongoing court cases.

Little word from Jeff Bezos

“I know you’ve already heard this from Will, but I wanted to also weigh in directly: the journalistic standards and ethics at The Post will not change,” Bezos said in a memo to Washington Post senior editors.

Bezos selected Lewis to lead the paper out of its financial troubles: the paper lost at least $177 million over the previous two years, and digital subscriptions are down from their peak.

The Washington Post and Bezos have did not respond to requests for comment on the latest developments surrounding Lewis or his standing at the paper.