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An insight into the character, personality and passion of the leading figures in the Investigation and Intelligence industry who have shaped the way we gather, analyse and utilise information and intelligence.
I know there's so many, but pick out your favorite, Your favorite
investigation. One that at the time caused
a massive stir. I discovered that the. The Director
General of the BBC, John Burt, that he was actually being
paid as a freelancer to allow him to
avoid paying tax. Being the investigative journalist,
it's very frustrating. I mean, for every story that
you succeed and break, there are lots of failures.
It is obsessive, it's time consuming. It's also
very much, I wouldn't say out of
favor, but proprietors like it when
it succeeds because they get all the plaudits and
win awards and things. But if somebody doesn't
want you to find out something, there are lots of things they can
do to keep it secret. And the way our,
our society, our financial system, our
legal system, the way that's all structured, in my
view, it helps people who want to hide things.
Hello and welcome to the Intelligence Advantage podcast where we talk
to the movers and shapers in the investigation and intelligence
space. My name is Gary Miller. I've been an investigative
lawyer for nearly half a century, and I'm also the chairman of the
IfG, a network of international investigative and
asset recovery lawyers. My guest
today is somebody who has spent a lifetime on both sides of
the headlines, writing them, managing them, and
occasionally becoming one himself. Chris
Blackfoot Hearst has been the editor of the Independent City, editor
of the Evening Standard, director at CT Partners, and
is now a writer, commentator and strategic communications
advisor. He's also the author of two cracking
books, Too Big to Jail on HSBC
cartels and the World's Most Expensive Apology
and the World's Biggest Cash Machine on Manchester United,
the Glazers and Football's Uneasy Marriage with money.
Chris, welcome to the Intelligence Advantage and thank you for
swapping the Editor's chair for the interviewee seat.
Okay, It's a pleasure, Gary. And I think
what I've got to do is kick off immediately with the question
of what is it that drives your quest
for knowledge and unearthing
things? What is it? Was there a particular event when you were
a young lad? Did mom and dad drop you on your head and that's when
it started? What happened? Look,
it's interesting. I think I always say this to.
When I speak to people who say they want to be
journalists, I often say,
how nosy are you? I am. There's
something about me. I am a nosy parker. If I go in
a garden, I have to look over the fence to see what's
next door. I was once given a great piece of Advice. As a
journalist, somebody said to me, never walk past the photocopier without lifting
the lid. And it's great advice, great advice.
It's sustained me ever since. You find out the most amazing things. Look, if there
was one event, and I was absolutely gripped
by it at the time, we all were, and I suppose I'm
dating myself now, but it was all the President's
men. Watching two journalists bring
down the most powerful man in the world without firing a shot
was an incredible, incredible film. I love the book. Woodward and
Bernstein were my heroes. And
that diligent, plodding,
when you're dealing with incredibly
mighty powerful forces, but
you're probing away and getting inside them
and uncovering a scandal.
It sustained me. It's something I've always thought about. My first
national newspaper was the Sunday Times. Right. That was the
Insight. Was that the Insight magazine or. Yeah, I
started. No, I started on the business section and then they moved
me to the Insight team. I was deputy editor of
Insight. And that was. Well, it was a mixture, really.
But its remit was investigations, and
we tried to keep them in the public interest.
I mean, perhaps others could be the judge of that, whether we succeeded or
failed. But we broke some very big stories, including the
super gun affair. We led on that.
I mean, we were.
Some of the time. It's hard to imagine, looking at me now, but
are you gonna say you. Did have hair at one stage, like me?
I didn't have hair then, actually. I was. I was. I. I
lost my hair quite. Quite young. But
hard to imagine me going undercover. But we did go
undercover, and we posed at all sorts of people. And
sometimes successfully, sometimes not, sometimes scarily. And
it was. It was
fascinating work, sometimes
very frustrating. I mean, you know, you can spend forever
investigating somebody and, you know, I mean,
as we like to say, we know the story's true, but it's not good enough
to be true for a lawyer. And we.
We lacked the killer fact. And however hard we tried,
we couldn't get the killer fact. Was this on a particular. Was this on the
super gun case or not? No, I'm
trying to remember one. I mean,
certainly I spent some time investigating
the funding of the ira. That was very
frustrating. I mean, one of the lessons.
One of the things you realize is that while, I
mean, the way. The way it's painted and,
you know, obviously all the President's men and onwards, but
the way it's painted on screen is you've got these
journalists and they're racing around and they're trying to Find
out and get inside things. Well, if you're dealing with
people, an institution, an organization
that doesn't want you to find out something, then
the odds are stacked very heavily in their favor. I mean,
it is very, very hard. I'm sure you know this in
your work. They're very similar. And I dealt a lot with lawyers
and we were often hand in glove because
we can ask questions, they can't. Likewise, they
can find things that we can't. And sometimes we come together on
story and work well together. But if somebody
doesn't want you to find out something, there are lots of things
they can do to keep it secret. And the
way our society, our
financial system, our legal system, the way that's all
structured, in my view, it helps people who want to hide
things. I mean, I
think since I was probably in short trousers,
politicians have talked about the
need to crack down on tax evasion,
money laundering, terrorists,
financing drug, organ financing, a drug crime,
you name it. And yet
all around the world, there are offshore
havens that literally sell secrecy.
That's what they do. And some of them are even
protected by the British Crown. Is there,
when you mentioned the secrecy
factor here, Chris, is there another jurisdiction that,
now that you look at it and over the years that you would say, gosh,
I would have loved to have been an investigative journalist there. Would it be
the States? Is that any better or not? I think it would be the States.
Actually. We have a view and I don't know what it's
like right now. I'm not sure if I'd want to be an investigator. Well, I
think it'd make much difference. But the truth is,
America, we like to think in Britain that we have a very open
society. It's one of the things we're taught. It's almost in
our. It's slipped into our DNA
the moment we're born that Britain is this very liberal, open,
cultured, even intellectual place,
liberal, et cetera, et cetera. Certainly
that's how we sell ourselves to the world. In
fact, it's a very secretive
place. And
compared with America, which we like to view the
American legal system,
we're all a bit on this side of the pond. We're a bit snooty about
it. They do crazy things, but actually, I take my
hat off to them. It works. And they
have a very open. I mean, look, I can't find out,
you know, I'm sure you haven't, by the way, but I can't find out if
you've got a criminal record in this country in the States.
And you're in the States, you can. I see, yes,
in the States. I mean if you think
about, and I've written many, many of
these stories about politicians,
you know, taking bribes, being, being paid to ask
questions, paid to say things,
offered inducements. Well, in the States
and they're often put through on expenses or they're,
they're shrouded in some sort of opaque
explanation. In the States they
don't, I mean obviously they have
bribery and sleaze and that happens there as well. But
if I want to find out, I mean, the best
example I can give is the scandal in the UK of
MPs expenses. You know,
that entire scandal
rested on one person effectively
stealing, well, improperly.
He took something he wasn't supposed to take,
which was a CD
detailing all the MPs expenses and selling it to a
newspaper. Now as it happens in the States,
and the idea
in the States that journalists pay for information
is anathema. I mean they just do not do it.
It's absolutely forbidden in the States and
they look down on the British media because
sometimes frankly do have to pay.
I mean, as it happened, I worked for newspapers that were deeply impoverished.
But you know. Can you
think of a particular case where you had no alternative but to
pay? We certainly had, we certainly had to pay in the
past, private detectives and people to find out
information. We have. Look,
when I was, when I was in the Sunday Times, we did pay, not
large sums and we would say that these were
for the public interest. We weren't doing, we weren't
at the tabloid end, we weren't doing celebrity tittle tattle.
But the point I'd make is that
the Telegraph, which broke the MP's expenses story,
they paid for that CD
in the states, members of Congress,
the Senate, et cetera. Their expenses are
detailed, they're listed. I mean all we were asking
was all
we wanted to see, all the Telegraph paid to see, if you think about
it, was information
detailing what our taxpayers money has been
spent on. These are MPs claiming
expenses paid for out of public funds. Yet me
as a member of the public, I cannot find out
what they're claiming. And that is a typical example. I
mean, I can think of another one. A very good friend of mine,
Andrew Lowney, the author and literary agent,
he has spent now,
I think it's 400, I mean certainly more than 350,
getting probably around £400,000
of his own money, trying to get access to
the Lord Mountbatten archive.
Mountbatten died when he died, his
archive, all his material from his life,
much of which contains his time as
Viceroy of India, was left to the nation
for historians, future historians, et cetera, to study.
So you'd think it perfectly reasonable that Andrew Lowney, who's a very
respectable figure, should be allowed to look at this archive?
The answer's come back, no, you can't. Just because it was left
to the nation doesn't mean the nation can necessarily see it.
So you can't see all of it. And that's an example.
So this has passed me by, I'm sad to say,
Chris. So who has he been suing? What body or which
part of government or whatever? He's been involved in
countless legal claims against
the. It's actually against Southampton University, which
is the keeper of the archives. I see. But,
you know, the palace is involved. And,
look, this happens all the time. I mean, you know, all walks of
life. I mean, another one that comes to mind is people who
leave their houses and their art collections in lieu
of tax on the basis that
the public will be able to view the art or go around the
house. And it is heavily restricted.
I don't know. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's our
class system. Sorry. Let me ask you this.
Which newspaper either covered or is covering the Andrew
Rowney story? It's been in many papers.
Honestly, recently. Yeah, yeah. It's been, of course,
celebrity. He's written the. He's just produced the new book about
Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, but before that,
he wrote about Mountbatten. Okay. So do you happen to know
what the grounds are that Southampton University say
they are not allowed? The
palace has the. I think it's the. I need
be careful about my facts here, but Southampton University
or Buckingham Palace? I think it's Southampton University.
It might have been left to the Nation, but they have the ultimate
veto as to what can be made available
to the nation. It's just an example of
the way this society is. I mean, there is a scene
and there's an episode in all the President's Men that's always stuck
with me, which is. And I can't remember why, so
forgive me, but there's a point in the saga
where the two journalists, Bob Woodward and
Bernstein, want to. They need
to find out what the President. What Nixon
has been borrowing or what his staff have been borrowing.
What book have they been borrowing from
the Congressional Library. I know it sounds an
arcane point, but it's relevant to the story.
Okay. And I Can't remember why. And
after some persuasion, they get the
answer. And the answer is actually quite critical at that
point in the story in this country. If I asked
Downing street, what are you
borrowing? What are you borrowing from the
British Library or the House of Commons library, I
would be told politely, but,
you know, rudely, if you want to apply rude, you know, but,
you know, I'll be told where to go. Yeah, more politely than
that, but it would be denied. You could not find that out.
And that really goes through all walks of life in Britain.
I mean, a very good example I would give you, which
has always stayed with me, and I was closely involved, so
we're going back in the midst of time, but I
was. One of the big
scandals, big core celebra,
was the supply of arms to Iraq
when we were not meant to be supplying arms to Iraq.
Is this the Matrix Churchill saga? Yes. So
this is 88, 89. It
was much later than that. It was the mid-90s.
Oh, okay. Well, the. The. The. I. I was.
It broke in the early 90s
in the John Major. I think the John Major government, because I was in the
Houses of Parliament then, and it led to
the Scott inquiry. Who. Who were you working for at that
stage? You were. I was at the Independent. I was their
Westminster reporter. I see. Okay. I had my dream
job. Of all the jobs I've had, it was probably the best job I've ever
had. My job was simply to go around the Houses of
Parliament and find stories.
So this is when you were Westminster correspondent, is that right? Yes,
I was in the lobby. I didn't have to go to listen to the briefings
or anything like that. My job was effectively to be a
sleuth with a. How many sleuths were there
wandering around Parliament at the time? You were. There's probably all sorts,
but I was one wearing a pass, and I
was allowed to, you know, I could effectively go
anywhere I wanted, pretty much apart from the House of Commons
chamber and the Members bar. But everything else was
pretty open to people carrying passes. I
could go around and what people may not realize
about the place like that, and I'm sure it's true of other jurisdictions,
the amount of material is generated on a daily
basis in the Houses of Parliament. Written material
that literally just piles up every day.
Every day there will be reports.
There'll be a report, there'll be the
publication of the minutes. Of course, there's
Hansard, which, you know,
Hansard every day faithfully reproduces every
single word that is said
inside the House of Commons, inside the House of Lords,
in the main chambers, but also in all the committee rooms.
Yeah, but what I want to know is, Chris, I want to know what you
picked up by being an intuitive sleuth.
How many. How off. How long were you Westminster correspondent
for? I was five years. I was five years. I broke the
story about the Purgau Dam, which was a
deal to. Between the British
company and the Malaysian government to build a dam,
a hydroelectric dam, but it was
really a sweetheart deal being
used by the government to UK
government to further an arms contract. We
wanted to sell arms to Malaysia and that
was a pretty scandalous use of taxpayers money.
That was one. But hold on, hold on, before you move on,
just give me. Because you've alighted on it, just
tell me, how did you. You were the Westminster correspondent. Did you pick it
up by speaking to someone in the House of Commons
or was it something that you decided you wanted to research? I
think I saw it referenced in a report I was taught, and this is a
very good tip for anyone. Right, Another tip, apart from
never walk past a photocopy without lifting a lid. Another one is always
read a report from the back. You normally have the executive
summary at the front. I would
venture that 95% of people never get beyond the executive
summary. And at the back there's the
appendices. And those appendices
contain all the written evidence, all the written material that's
been submitted. I think it was in there. I saw reference
to it. But what piqued your interest? What was it that.
I think it was
the way it was described. Honestly, Gary, I can't.
No, it was a long time ago. Now, just give you an example of how
secret Britain is and how it works. So the Matrix
Churchill affair, which we were. The government was accused,
the Conservative government was accused of supplying
allowing arms or military equipment,
equipment that could be used for military purposes, to be
sold to Iraq in contravention of an
embargo. And that led to the.
That was a big scandal, big hue and cry. And then
governments do. What they always do in these situations is
that they. Did you break that story, Chris? Did you break the arms?
I can't remember if I actually broke it. I was certainly doing it day after
day after day, and it was an unfolding drama.
But then they do what they always do in this country,
which is when it gets too hot
politically, they call a halt and appoint a
judge to hold an inquiry, to have an inquiry. This
happens all the time. We've seen it with, you know, Right now
we've got inquiries into Covid. The post office
inquiry is still reporting. I mean, you
know, if it, if it looks awkward, you, you
immediately call a review. And the second
you call a review and it goes to judicial inquiry.
And of course, famously, we have this with Len and phone hacking,
which I was heavily involved in. Yeah, Tell me a little bit about the phone
hacking story. How do you. Let me just finish. Let me just finish about
Scott, because the main. I'm only going to let
you finish if you promise. You've got to promise me no more, no
bleating on about how secretive the government is. I want
to know what you personally have done to lift the lid on that secrecy.
Okay, okay, okay. Let me just tell you, gives the example. So
Scott inquiry. It sat for 18 months. Richard
Scott, the judge Lord, very senior judge, held this
inquiry vast expense. When the report was coming
out, they announced that it,
for the first time ever, and I'm dating myself, it would be published,
released as well as in hard copy. It would be released with
all the evidence on CD rom. Right. Remember a CD
rom? So we immediately got a bike messenger,
sent them over to wherever it was in Whitehall to get the
CD rom. They hot hooped back to the office. We
loaded it into the machine. We were expecting,
hallelujah, documents after documents. And
what we saw were literally blank pages where
all the documents had been redacted. Just because it was being
published on CD Rom didn't mean it couldn't also be
redacted. What was the
biggest scandal that you have, that you have blown the
COVID on? I know there's so many, but pick out your
favorite, um, your favorite
investigation. One that at the time
caused a massive stir was
I discovered that the, that the
Director General of the BBC, John Burt,
was. And this is the Director
general. I mean, this is the man in charge of the department, a whole organization,
the BBC, that he was actually being paid as a
freelancer to allow
him to avoid paying tax.
And that was a very big scandal at the time.
There was front pages everywhere. I was accused of
being. I mean, it's bizarre because the other thing that happens when you break stories
like that is the people turn on the messenger. So
they look at the message, but they also turn on the messenger. So
I was then accused of being part of some cabal to
get rid of the Director General of the BBC. And this story
ran and ran. I think I won an award for it. How did
you break it? Why did you pick it up and how did you break
it? I'm Sorry to be very mundane about this,
I literally. The phone went. And as it
happened, I was at the Independent, and our office back then was in
City Road in the City of London. And across the road
was company's house. And this person said,
go across the road to company's house. And
we dealt back then in microfiches. Oh, I remember those days.
Get the feesh for John Burt Productions and phone me
back. So who was that? Who was on the
phone? I can't. We don't reveal sources. Of course you don't, silly.
Okay, come on. But did that person reveal their name then?
Or did they just say, I knew who they were? Oh, I see. Okay. And
I went across the road. I paid my. Probably back then, only a
pound or five pounds, whatever it was. I got the leash. There
it was, loaded it up to the. Into the reader, and
there it was. And what. What was there was laid
out in black and white. John Vert had a very poor
accountant, and his
accountant hadn't effectively summarized
his expenses, which you were allowed to do. He'd actually detailed them
in glorious Technicolor. So it had literally did have his
Armani suits, his satellite dish he was having on the roof of
his house. His meals, his taxes, everything was laid out
in minute detail. Okay, let me ask you this. Pause.
The point about this is, I would say this, it still didn't
prove that. He wasn't paying tax.
Exactly. And that this, the money in this company wasn't
necessarily his BBC salary. It certainly matched
it at the top. But what we were told he was being
paid, but there was no proof. And when I put the call to the
BBC, it was completely denied.
They said, this is rubbish, blah, blah, blah. And I actually
wrote the story that was. And it wasn't destined for the front page
for this reason. It was full of words like might, maybe,
could. But I
decided to have one more go. And on a Saturday morning, this was for
a Sunday newspaper, Sunday Independent. I actually went to his
house in Southland and I knocked on the door.
He came to the door, he tried to close the door. He nearly broke my
foot, literally. Were you there with a camera as well, with a cameraman?
No, no. But he pushed the door on my foot, right.
I said to him, you're breaking my foot. And he said, I don't talk to
journalists at my house. I thought, that's a bit odd thing, as the Director General
of the BBC. But.
Had you tried to go into his office, Chris? Had you tried to go
or you knew you. You would never get past the reception desk, is that it?
No, we'd never get in the security. So he.
I went back to the office feeling very crestful and
I still couldn't prove anything. And then my phone went and it was the
BBC head of corporate affairs who said,
look, in return for leaving John
Burt alone, we will issue a statement.
And then five minutes later this statement came across
confirming my story and it literally was
a eureka moment. I had the pleasure
of going back into the story and changing all those words.
May my could to is, is and
has. So it became definitive, it went on the front page
and we had the story. But another one,
hold on, before you. Go on, I want to ask this question. On a
scale of moral turpitude or even
unlawful criminal turpitude, what
is coming out and what I've seen is, is there's certainly this theme of
government servants who are not accounting, in your view,
for what they are doing with the government's money,
etc. And using money
in, for example, the Malaysian deal. Do
you have a really narrow scale of
what you want to reveal and what you think is heinous?
Is it one of the most heinous things that a government servant, or the most
heinous thing they can do is use
government money for personal purposes? And why
I would say, look, we're all brought up on
James Bond films and things like that.
That's at one extreme. Do they really
sanction black ops
wet jobs, whatever the phrase that they use in
spooksville, I've no idea. But you'd have to
suspect they do, wouldn't you? Yeah, you would. But you know,
it's never really surfaced occasionally in connection
with more to do with other
agencies in other countries. So you come back from that if
that's the worst thing? Well, coming back from that is
misuse of public funds, misuse of taxpayers money,
Hypocrisy. We don't like hypocrisy. No one
likes hypocrites. And then the other thing I think is
the, and this is obviously true of Watergate, the COVID up is often
worse than the crime. Of course. Yeah. And I
mean, another story I broke was the story that
to when Princess Diana
gave her famous interview to Martin Bashir, the
one saying that there's the three people in this marriage, you know,
the famous interview, the Panorama interview. Yeah. The
following day I had a phone call from somebody and I'm not saying
who, and I've been asked countless times,
somebody rang me and said, you should ask
the BBC, did they use, did
they falsely accuse, did they falsely allege
that MI5 were following and
watching Diana and was that how they got the interview? In
other words, was she made to believe that
she was herself the target of
MI5 and being watched and, you know, she felt
under massive pressure. So I put the call in,
it was completely blanket, denied. Who did
you put the call to? To BBC Press office. And
I then went back to the person who phoned me
and said, told him what had happened.
He said, you should go back to them and ask,
did they actually use, did they falsify documents
to back up their claim? And I put that to them and that was completely
denied. Now, I was able to write the story
saying that speculation, it was based on speculation.
I couldn't prove anything. I was being assured
by somebody who obviously had very close
connections or was within the BBC. And I'm not saying more than
that. They knew what they were talking about later,
years later, and we're talking very
recently, there's been yet another
official inquiry into this whole affair. And in
the timeline, in the timeline of
events, the very first call alerting the BBC
or people at the BBC to what Panorama might have been doing
was yours, made by yours truly. But
that led actually to a very big cover up.
Let me ask you this before you continue. Did you ever meet
Bashir? Was he a good buddy of yours? No, no,
Bashir did not want this story out and it's cost him
dearly because it's now being shown that,
yes, he got the world famous. I mean, look, there's two schools of thought on
this. Yeah. I'll be very frank. Some people say
he got the world famous, the historic interview on
the back of subterfuge and effectively deceit.
But others say, yeah, but he got the interview. Yeah.
And there's two ways of looking at it. The point was, though,
that the
snowball effect of that interview led to the.
I mean, following that interview, the Queen ordered Charles
and Diana to separate. They were told, and as
publicly documented, they were told by the palace
to. That's enough. And
that led to divorce. It led to Diana
not having the palace security and of course it led
to her dying in the car
crash in Paris. Arguably, if she'd had
palace security with her that night.
She might still be alive, is your point. And certainly
those around William and Harry and others blame
that interview for what happened. I see. Do you. Do you think that
there is a valid connection between those
events? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I
don't believe necessarily it was. I mean, some people go much further and
talk about conspiracy
that the
supposed forces of darkness, she had to
be effectively silenced.
I don't buy that. I mean, one thing I have learned, Gary, is that,
and I learned this very early on at the House of Commons, I went to
the Parliament believing that much of what
happens around us is based on conspiracy.
And I've been there about two weeks and I realized it was total chaos.
It's based on incompetence. Not. Not conspiracy. Right. It really
is. It really is. And, but I want to
ask you. This before it goes out of my brain. What
level of misrepresentation,
inference, inducement and
then deceit? What is it that a journalist, an
investigative journalist, in your view, is entitled,
justified to use to get at the truth, and
does it vary in severity according to what that
truth is likely to be or is suspected
to be? Yeah, I would. Look, I would be very
candid about this. I would argue,
and I have argued and I've appeared in court
in cases on the wrong side.
Pretty much anything is justifiable if it's
in the public interest. I believe that the media,
the fourth estate, has a duty to
hold our politicians, hold our whole businesses,
but certainly politicians, where it's public
money involved and the national interest and the
good of the nation, we have a duty to hold them
to truth. And anything
pretty much that
gets to that is justified. Now, the problem
with what I've said is that we, the media,
me, the journalist, I am putting, I am effectively
making myself judge and jury. Who am I to say if
something's in the public interest? And that's where it gets very
tricky. But particularly when you are
the journalist on, let's say, about to
enter somebody's or knock on their door.
And the most, in a way, the mildest
misrepresentation is, yes, I'm the gas man.
I've come to look at this.
So you are going to be the determinator there. And then I doubt very much
you're going to call up your senior editor or whoever it is and say, is
it okay if I do this? That just doesn't happen in real life, does it?
No, it doesn't happen in real life. And the
less people know at the top, they don't want to
know. They want to be protected.
And the way to protect themselves. Is that the view you took as editor?
Don't tell me, go out and do your job, but just don't tell me what
the hell you're doing. You're putting
me on the right. I'd like to say that I did know.
I'm Pretty sure I didn't know everything. I remember
on one occasion. I won't say what this was about, but I had to put
somebody on the spot in my office and say, I need to know who your
source is because we were in very deep water on
something. What exactly the people at the
top of those media organizations,
News Corporation in particular, knew exactly about what
was being done in their name? It's hard to tell,
but the point is it was being done in their name and
they should have known. But is that a classic
example of the COVID up being, I say,
10 times worse, being just exponentially worse than
saying, yes, we figured out that with
mobile telephones that if you called them and you press this number
in, we could breach confidentiality
and find out what they were saying. Is that. Is the
COVID up worse than the, than the crime, do you think?
I think it is. I think if. Well, in that particular
case, on incident or even
a handful of incidents. Yeah. A handful of celebrities
and politicians and all sorts of people. I mean, you know,
the mother of Stephen Lawrence, I mean, you know,
Millie Dowler, I mean, you know, the poor girl who was murdered. I
mean, is that where it started? Was it the Millie Dowler
murder inquiry? Is that where it kicked off? No, no,
it started before that. It started
with. It actually began with a
report in the News of the World
about Prince, Prince
Charles, as he then was expressing concern that William
had, I think he'd either broken his arm or injured his arm
playing rugby at Eton. And
the palace showed Charles the
cutting. They get the cuttings, the news, you know, and they.
He looks at it and said,
that's exactly what I said. I see.
Those were my exact words. And the interesting thing
about this is that I'm sure you'll say you're not Gary, but,
you know, let others be the judge of that. We're all fundamentally
lazy. If something is given to us
on a plate, you know, we just can't help
ourselves. And that's what happened. I
mean, you know, hacking was. I mean, it's called hacking,
you know, I actually think it's a misnomer. I still think hacking in most
people's minds, that, you know, you're thinking of people sitting
at computer screens and actually hacking into someone's
account. It wasn't like that, as you rightly say. It was,
you know, it actually all started with a
double glazing. I think it was a double glazing salesman in South
Wales who couldn't get his phone messages because his phone had
broken. So he phoned Vodafone.
It's true story. He phoned Vodafone and said he
needed one for work. He knew someone had left him a message
about an order, right. So he phoned
Vodafone and said, do you keep phone messages? And they said, no, sir, that would
be highly improper. And he said, oh,
I need this. It was message. And the person
on the other end said, well, did you change the factory setting? And
he said, what factory setting? And of course, all of us,
all of us, you know, you get your mobile
phone, it comes in a box, you rip open the box, you turn it on
and you start using it. How many of us actually read the instructions?
And there is none of us. Security setting, security setting.
And this lady said, if you didn't change the factory
setting, what sort of phone is it? He told her, she said,
you dial something like hash,
hash, and then the number, and then 333,
whatever it is, hash and you'll get your messages.
And he twigged immediately and said, can
anyone do that? And they said, if you haven't changed the
factory setting, anyone can access your messages.
And oh, my God. So he
phoned. He did his duty as a
citizen and phoned. He phoned MI5.
He actually phoned MI5. There was a phone number. He phoned
Scotland Yard. They weren't interested, presumably knew about
it already. And then he did the crazy thing really
well. You thought he was doing the right thing. He phoned the sun news
desk or the News of the World in the Mirror and
they said, we'll get back to you. And of course, they
never did. I see. That's amazing. So
somewhere, somehow, somewhere, is a phone call from this
salesman. I think he was called. I'd have to check. I'm pretty sure he was
called John Morgan. And he was in Swansea, somewhere
like that, in South Wales. And you can just imagine the person at the
sun who then goes up to whoever was in
control of the sun at the time and says, you've just been told this. And.
And the. And the champagne
bottles start to open. Right. Yeah. And the point I'd make as
well is that journalists
hacking would never have been discovered. Really.
Coming back to the Buckingham palace, the Royal story, if you. And
this happened with a lot of the celebrities, that the
journalists were lazy. Instead of. And they didn't. Yes. They didn't summarize.
Instead of summarizing or changing the words, they just
repeated what the person had said and that
just put everyone on alert. Yeah. Let me ask you this question.
You have uncovered Some of the most. Some of the biggest
scandals in the last
30, maybe 40 years. Do you ever worry
about a Chris Blackhurst
identifying you, you know, an alter ego, saying, you
know what? This man is Mr. Whistle, not
whistleblower, Mr. Scandal Breaker. I'm going to
do a deep dive on him. I'm going to try my best to
embarrass, to find out something illegal, unlawful.
Do you worry about that or not? Yeah, I mean,
they wouldn't. I like to think they wouldn't find much.
I've. I've certainly. I mean, there was. I don't know if you remember
this episode, but during the whole
British Airways dirty tricks saga against
Richard Branson and Virgin, they were employing private
detectives and they were going around and I was. I was writing
story after story about that. Who were you with at the
time? I was with the Sunday Times and they picked
up the police, caught a guy,
literally, in
London, in West London. He was
stealing somebody's rubbish and
when they searched him, he was literally found
stealing a dustbin full of bags of
rubbish. And when they searched him, they found a list in his
pocket of names and mine was the next name.
And when he was interviewed,
he said that he'd been
around looking at the houses, checking them out.
And in my case, I had a
side gate, side access, but there was
a board on top to stop people, anyone climbing
over. I see. And that's. The bins were behind that locked
door. So you were aware
of this technique and so you protected your bins, is that it? No, no,
no, not at all. It was just. No, but there was, if you
remember, there was later, about that time actually,
there was a famous. They became famous. There was a guy called
Benji the Bin Man. Oh, yeah, I remember him. Benji the Bin
Man. His real name was Benjamin Pell. He was
going around the Inns of Court
and that area around where all the lawyers are,
Hoban, et
cetera, and literally loading up the rubbish
in the back of his van, taking it to his house
in North London, into the garage where he had a
tarpaulin spread on the floor and he was spreading out all
the contents. Now, between all the bits of
sandwich, the half eaten Mars Bar
and the whatever people chuck in their bins,
he was finding original and important legal
documents that had just been thrown away and
he would then phone and I would get the calls from him.
Right, so you knew him well, did you? I
wouldn't say I knew him well. We knew him and he
did want money, but he had found
documents. But to come back to Me? Look, I've
had threats.
You know, it goes to the territory. The one that really
scared me a lot was a guy who did leave a
very threatening message on a phone at home.
Right. And the message really said, because I've phoned this number,
you must realize I know where you live.
And then it clicked. That was it. Yeah, that was
scary. And that was in the context of what investigation,
Chris? That was in a political.
I mean, we're going back now, but that was the. To do
with a businessman called Owen Oysten, who was
being. It was a labor supporting businessman and he'd been
targeted by conservatives and they were
investigating him and they were
taping his phone calls, following him, et cetera, et cetera.
What they were doing was highly improper. Right.
What, in order. In order to besmirch the Labour Party, is that it or what?
To besmirch him and besmirch the Labour Party. I see.
But you know, other people,
I'm sure lawyers have threats. I mean, you know, it
goes with the go to the territory.
I mean, yeah, my life is pretty much an open book.
So you don't have a bodyguard anymore? No,
if I had a bodyguard, he'd look like me.
You mean a double? That's what we all need if we're investigating
is a double that you've seen in 28 different places. Right.
Well, you're my double and I. Absolutely, I go around
with you. No, look, you know,
if I ever felt in danger. There was one guy where we were
taping his conversation and my colleague had
to kept disappearing and looking very
panicked. And the guy said, where's your. What's he doing? We were undercover.
Well, you know, we were posing as somebody. We weren't. Or we
were showing interest in a story that wasn't the real story we were after.
And eventually, after a long hard stare,
he shrugged and said, okay, then. And
when we got back in the car, what was going on? And he
said, well, when we left the office, he put his hand in the
top drawer to grab the. The pearl
corded tapes. You know, there's tapes you use for dictaphones. Yeah, those
teeny ones. The tapes were 20 minutes. Yeah,
the tapes were 20 minutes, not. Not 90 or
60. So every 20 minutes he was going to the loo to change the tape.
I love it. And if that had been. If we'd been rumbled, I don't know
what would have happened. I mean, probably
nothing at all, but, you know, it was
things like that. All right, let me ask you, let me
ask you this has your hunger
for unearthing naughtiness diminished at all?
Or is it still something that
you wake up in the morning and you think, what can I
do now? What area deserves to be looked at and who
deserves to be, as it were, examined and
shown to be and examined to see whether or not they are
hypocritical or they're doing something unlawful? Is it
in your. Is it in your veins? It's in my veins.
If people tell me things or I spot something, I
can't let it go. I'm interested. I think as you get
older, and I think it's a
combination of age and
wisdom and possibly an element of exhaustion,
you become more selective.
And so in the past there would have
been. I think I would have gone
after anything. Now I'm a bit more.
A bit more selective, but
the hunger is still there. And now you're freelancing, are
you, Chris? You're not attached to any particular
these days? I don't really. I write
columns. I do now
and again reveal something in a column. Look,
I would say two things here. One is being the
investigative journalist. It's very
frustrating. I mean, for every story that you
succeed and break, there are lots of failures. It
is obsessive, it's time consuming. It's also very
much, I wouldn't say out of favor,
but proprietors like it when it
succeeds because they get all the plaudits and
win awards and things. But
generally, from a. A commercial standpoint,
it's a very
costly way of writing, a very
costly form of journalism. You've got people
tied up for months on end on one story that might
fail for all sorts of reasons. And
the sadness is, however good the stories
are, they don't really do much for circulation.
You know, you have your hits,
you have your sales, you have your hits,
but people then move on and go back to where they were. I mean,
and then other people pick up your story and what, suddenly
it's not your story, it's everybody's story. And so
proprietors have a very. I mean, if you think about it, a lot
of investigative broadcast journalism has
disappeared. What was that wonderful program
where I think even Mishkans
may have acted for him. He used to front up with camera
crew. Maybe it was just a version of 60
Minutes or whatever it was, was that. Wasn't there a fellow that did?
Yeah, well, we had. There was Donald, you might be thinking of.
Of Donald McIntyre. I think so. Donald
McIntyre used to do a lot of stuff like that. The Panorama
used to be an Hour long. It's now 30 minutes. World in
Action was an ITV. I see
equivalent. It long disappeared. I've done.
I've made dispatches for Channel 4.
Channel 4 doesn't have dispatches anymore that used to be an
hour long. Because these stories need telling. They're
not easy stories. No, they require a lot of resources.
Yeah, well, we have crept, or zoomed, I should
say, past the witching hour, and
I could carry on for another few hours, days and
weeks. Chris, you are one of these. You're one of these
fountains of information and experience
that requires to be tapped, if I'm not mixing up my
metaphor. So I want to say thank you big time for sharing some of
your. Stories, asking me if you ever want me back, if there's ever anything
breaking in the news. And you think, I wonder if Chris knows about this or.
I'm sure you do. And one day when we get together, I
want you to show me your little black book with all of the sources with
the code. So of course they won't have their names there. That will be,
you know, Mr. Orange, Mr. Blue, Mr. Gray. Right. I'll give
you a copy of Jeffrey Epstein's. I've got that. You can have that. Oh,
thank you. That's what you. That's what you called good friends. Thank
you, Chris. It's lovely to chat with you. Take care, buddy.
Bye bye. Thank you for listening and if
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