GET WOOD
The Spy & The Spymaster Behind The 'Bugging' of Baroness Lawrence
A rum cast of Scotland Yard’s finest are lined up as witnesses on both sides of the super claim brought by seven high profile figures against The Mail newspaper group.
The case started last week at London’s High Court and is set to hear hotly contested claims that Mail journalists commissioned private investigators to bug, burgle, blag, bribe, tap and hack private information.
The spectre of police corruption will also be examined at Court 76, as the cop witnesses were once signifiant players in a series of covert operations run by Scotland Yard’s anti-corruption squad, also known as the Untouchables.
From 1994-2012, this secret unit looked into crooked relationships between cops, criminals and reporters, choosing to bury what didn’t suit their purpose.
The Untouchables era was defined by two unsolved murders in south London. They are of course the killing of private investigator Daniel Morgan, who was axed to death in 1987, and the stabbing of black student Stephen Lawrence in 1993.
Stephen’s mother, Doreen Lawrence, is one of the seven claimants suing The Mail after a 25-year alliance with the right-wing tabloid.
The close relationship blew up in January 2022 when Prince Harry, another super claimant, suggested The Mail may have played her for a fool. Lawrence was subsequently led to believe there was credible evidence that the newspaper had bugged her.
The allegation is damaging to more than The Mail’s bank balance, were it to be proved true.
Ever since running a front page in February 1997 naming five men as Stephen’s ‘MURDERERS’ and daring them to sue, the newspaper has used its Lawrence campaign to shield criticism of its fire-stoking coverage of race, immigration and other issues that make it the bete noire of liberals.
But that shield has now gone and a loss in court could also affect owner Lord Rothermere’s £500m bid to buy the rival right-wing Telegraph titles.
It was Labour after all who launched a public inquiry into the Lawrence murder, made Jamaican-born Doreen a baroness and now appears minded to refer the Telegraph bid for investigation on plurality and public interest grounds.
Baroness Lawrence OBE has maintained her criticism of Scotland Yard even after the Macpherson public inquiry into her son’s murder concluded in 1999 that the force was “institutionally corrupt”.
This weighty label is defined as an organisation that puts its own reputation and that of its bosses before the public interest and a duty of candour to those it had failed.
Currently, a public inquiry into undercover policing is examining the circumstances in which two police officers spied on the Lawrence family in the 1990s - which Scotland Yard kept from the Macpherson inquiry, when one of the spies, Peter Francis, thought it should know.
That infiltration took place at the same time Baroness Lawrence is now alleging The Mail was bugging her using the notorious private investigator Jonathan Rees - who readers of this newsletter will know was the prime suspect for the murder of Morgan, his business partner.
Rees was acquitted in 2011 due to prosecutorial misconduct, police corruption and subsequently awarded damages for malicious prosecution.
In 2021 the O’Loan inquiry, which had sat for eight years examining the incompetent and duplicitous police response to the Morgan murder and family, concluded that Scotland Yard was still institutionally corrupt.
The Untouchables ran the Morgan and Lawrence murder investigations. Scotland Yard hoped a line had been drawn under both scandals. But both sides of the super claim have coaxed coppers who were involved in the Morgan and Lawrence scandals out of retirement.
The courtroom showdown presents an opportunity for some of these police witnesses to settle old scores with Scotland Yard or to defend the organisation from accusations of cover up.
The inner workings of the Untouchables around both murders will be exposed in the coming weeks along with the considerable baggage of the police witnesses.
In the red corner supporting Lawrence is former detective chief superintendent David Cook, whose hubris, hypocrisy and corruption played a significant part in the collapse of the Morgan murder trial.
Former assistant commissioner Bob Quick is also lending his integrity to the Lawrence camp. He was previously criticised by the Morgan family for lacking in the candour department.
The Lawrence claim relies mostly on former detective constable Derek Haslam, who spied on the Morgan family while working undercover for the Untouchables inside Rees’ office.
The Mail needed a senior officer who could undermine Haslam’s claim that Rees was “obsessed” with the Lawrence case and targeted the family on the newspaper’s instructions.
Eventually, the call went out to ‘Get Wood!’ And he came.
Retired deputy assistant commissioner David Wood was the Untouchables’ head of intelligence and Haslam’s controller during his undercover deployment in Rees’ office. He knows where the bodies are buried.
The Upsetter unpacks the stakes for Scotland Yard in the forthcoming High Court clash between the spy and the spymaster.
