Mrs Brooks, who was said to have twice offered to resign and twice been refused, will be asked to explain what she knew about the hacking of mobile phones belonging to celebrities, victims of crime, terrorism and even relatives of soldiers killed in action.
Senior executives at News International are understood to have been warned by the Metropolitan Police that their chief executive will be expected to present herself at a London police station to give a full account of the extent of her actions during the period from 2000 to 2003 when she was editor of the now disgraced paper.
Mrs Brooks will also be asked to clarify whether she authorised payments to police officers in return for information.
"We’ve been told that Rebekah will be questioned by the police in connection with their inquiries over the conspiracy to hack phones and making payments to officers. There has been contact from the police to prepare the company for this," a senior News International source said.
"There is a lot of anger here that she has seemed to be untouched by the fallout that is seeing good, innocent journalists lose their jobs, but it was always going to be a matter of time before the police turned to her."
The latest revelations will be a severe blow for the 43 year-old, whose career has taken her from a secretary at the News of the World to the helm of one of Britain’s most powerful companies.
Her rise saw her cultivate an unparalleled network of contacts in Parliament, the media, business and entertainment – allowing News International to wield enormous influence on the political and cultural life of Britain.
The guest list at her wedding to former jockey Charlie Brooks two years ago read like a Who’s Who of modern Britain, with Gordon Brown, the then Prime Minister, in attendance alongside David Cameron, Cherie Blair, Rupert Murdoch, and Guy Ritchie.
But the charm with which Rebekah Brooks works a room is underpinned by a determination evident throughout her rise.
She grew up in a middle class home in the village of Daresbury – nestled between the industrial Cheshire towns of Runcorn and Warrington.
Mrs Brooks, an only child, attended Appleton Hall County Grammar School and it was here, at 14, that she decided to become a journalist. She began working weekends at Eddy Shah’s Messenger Group in Warrington, "making tea and helping out".
After taking her A-levels she travelled to Paris, where she found a temporary job on the architecture and art journal L’architecture d’Aujourd’hui. Her Who’s Who entry claims that while in the French capital she attended the Sorbonne. Rather than a full degree, she appears to have enrolled on a six month culture, literature and language course for foreign students.
Back in the UK, Mrs Brook’s first break came with the help of a friend of her father Robert. The friend was one of a number of former Daily Star executives hired by Mr Shah to run his new tabloid, The Post. He got her a job as a secretary, but she displayed a hunger to make a name for herself.
Her then colleague Tim Minogue, now a journalist on Private Eye, said: "She was very bright, very intelligent, but instead of taking memos she was always bombarding the features editor with ideas for stories. I’ve never met anyone so ambitious."
One of her early triumphs came when she volunteered to drive 900 miles in 48 hours in her ageing Renault 5 to pick up a crate of an "aphrodisiac beer" form a Strasbourg brewery, which The Post wanted to give away as a prize.
It was this sort of mix of dogged determination and initiative that helped make her name when, aged 20, she moved to London and joined the News Of the World, first as a secretary and then a feature writer on its Sunday magazine.
Mrs Brooks rose to become the paper’s deputy editor, forging a strong friendship with its editor, Piers Morgan. She was quickly spotted by Rupert Murdoch, who admired her drive and unswerving loyalty to the company. So close did they become that the pair regularly swam together when he was in London and she came to be regarded as his fifth – and favourite – daughter. In 1998 she was appointed deputy editor of The Sun, before returning to the News of the World as editor in 2000.
It was around this time that the practice by News of the World journalists, and private investigators hired by the paper, of hacking into people’s mobile phone mailboxes grew to "industrial" proportions.
In 2003 she became The Sun’s first female editor and one her first day ran a picture of topless Page Three model Rebekah Parmar-Teasdale, captioned "Rebekah from Wapping, 22", a sign she had put aside reported objections to Page 3.
The previous year she had married Ross Kemp, the EastEnders actor. In a bizarre incident in 2005 she was arrested after allegedly assaulting Mr Kemp, though police released her without charge. She reportedly walked into her office the next day – straight from the police station – asked "much going on?" then declared that she had personally supplied a great front page story for Rupert Murdoch, who was in London at the time.
In June 2009 – the same month The Guardian broke the phone hacking story which would come back to haunt her and destroy the News of the World – it was announced that she would become News International’s chief executive from the following September.
At the same time Mrs Brook, said never to forget a name, was moving in elevated social circles. She attended the Prince of Wales’s 50th birthday party at Highgrove and counted the Blairs among her circle of friends. It was Mrs Brooks to whom Mrs Blair revealed her pregnancy with her son Leo. There were dinners with Bono, the campaigner and U2 singer, and a "sleepover" with Sarah Brown at Chequers.
Following her divorce from Mr Kemp, she married Charlie Brooks. The couple are at the heart of what has come to be known as "the Chipping Norton set", which includes the PR mogul Matthew Freud, his wife Elizabeth Murdoch, Rupert’s daughter, along with Mr Cameron and his wife Samantha, whose constituency house is close to the Brooks’ country home in the Oxfordshire town. Others in the set include Alex James of Blur, Sir Anthony Bamford, the founder of JCB, and Emily Oppenheimer Turner, of the De Beers diamond dynasty.
But it is her friendship with Mr Cameron – and the influence it brought News International – which has now become one of the most controversial aspects of the News of the World affair.
The pair are said to have gone riding together and in February this year it was disclosed that Mr Cameron had spent an evening during Christmas at the Brooks’s. The revelations reinforced the impression that News International had undue access to Britain’s political elite and Downing Street was forced to deny that the subject of Mr Murdoch’s controversial takeover of Sky had been discussed.
Among the guests that evening is thought to have been Andy Coulson, Mrs Brook’s successor as editor of the News of the World, who was arrested on Friday in connection with allegations of corruption and phone hacking.
Mr Coulson is now on police bail, the paper they both edited is gone and Mrs Brooks is set to be interviewed by detectives. The ultimate networker now faces the ultimate challenge – surviving the phone hacking scandal.
0 comments:
Post a Comment