Wolfman bites back: Neil Wallis tells how detention without trial destroys lives after he is cleared over phone hacking

 
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Ian Walker19 March 2013

As I walked into the Haymarket Hotel bar with the Wolfman of Fleet Street not a single head turned.

It was all very different 30 years ago. I first set eyes on Neil Wallis in a Gatwick car park. Diminutive and bearded, all eyes were on him as he snarled at a group of Home Office officials trying to organise a government press conference with some mercenaries returning from Africa.

Today the man in front of me could not be less lupine. The thick, black facial hair has been replaced with greying “designer” stubble, and in open-necked white shirt and smart blue suit he fits in perfectly with the businessmen and women enjoying pre-theatre drinks.

He maintains he was first called The Wolfman by a news editor at the Daily Star where he began his national newspaper career and where his stories appeared under the byline “The World’s Greatest Reporter”.

“It was because of the way I looked and because I always got my teeth into any story,” he says, though it has been claimed the nickname came during his reporting of the Yorkshire Ripper murders when he was credited with being responsible for the theory that the killer attacked only on a full moon.

Whatever the genesis, it is a name that stuck as Wallis, now 62, worked his way to the top of a range of tabloid newspapers. He edited the People and was deputy editor of the Sun and the now defunct News of the World.

But at 6am on July 14, 2011, his life changed when police knocked on the door of his west London home. “My wife Gaye had to get out of bed and put on a dressing gown to go and let them in. I was on the phone to my lawyer,” he says.

Wallis was the ninth person to be arrested during the phone-hacking scandal, on suspicion of intercepting mobile phone communications. His former boss at the NoW, Andy Coulson, was already on bail and Rebekah Brooks would resign as News International chief executive the next day. She was arrested on July 17.

The arrest was the beginning of nearly 20 months spent on bail before the Crown Prosecution Service decided last month that there was not enough evidence for him to go to trial.

During that period Wallis was questioned at Hammersmith police station. He was bailed, then rebailed. As a result of the arrest he lost his job as MD of Outside Organisation, a company specialising in public relations.

The ordeal has cost him an estimated £200,000 in lost earnings, and the family car is long gone. For almost two years he was only able to sleep with the help of medication. Until charges were dropped, Wallis also feared he would have to find £250,000 to cover court costs.

“I would be lying if I said there were not many dark times for myself and my family. Just as there have been for all those others on bail for many months without charge and their families.

“It has had a horrible, profound effect on them all — but at least now I can restart and rebuild my career. Many of my colleagues and their families, they are still stuck in limbo waiting to find out their fate.

“I couldn’t speak to Coulson and Brooks whom I have known for years. This is detention without trial. Whole families are victims with their lives on hold. There must be another system.”

But Wallis maintains he is not surprised about the way he has been treated. “When I was arrested I was questioned over the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone and the deletion of voicemails. Also about the hacking of the families of the Soham murder victims — even though I was not at the News of the World at the time. The officers hadn’t done their basic homework. It was surreal. I was a trophy arrest. Their modus operandi seemed to be if we ask him enough wide-ranging questions, he will end up confessing to something.”

It was Wallis’s early newspaper experience that was to define his career. “I became crime reporter on the Manchester Evening News. I got on well with the police and developed a working relationship with them that carried on when I went to other papers and eventually to the Sun,” he says.

At the Sun he set up the Police Bravery Awards in 1995 which celebrate police officers who “go beyond the call of duty”. Every prime minister and home secretary since, including David Cameron, has attended the awards.

He became editor of the People, where he took a high-profile role in competing with the News of the World. He maintained his police contacts. “I was used to dining with senior police officers. There was an understanding that we could work together.”

Wallis names a string of police commissioners whose numbers he had in his contacts book. “Paul Condon, John Stevens, Paul Stephenson. All became Metropolitan Police Commissioners. I was able to talk to them all. Journalists, particularly in the tabloid press, discover things the police can’t. Co-operation with the Met can help catch criminals.”

With some senior officers, Wallis established a relationship that went further than simply professional.

He was close to John (now Lord) Stevens, Met Commissioner from 2000 to 2005, and counted Assistant Commissioner John Yates, head of the anti-terrorist squad, as a friend.

“It was all about football. He supported Liverpool and I am a Manchester United fan,” says Lincolnshire-born Wallis. “We began to go to matches together. They were social engagements. There was nothing we talked about which was damaging to the job he was doing. We were friends.”

Wallis says it was because they talked about things outside professional issues that Yates became involved in one of the key issues that focused attention on their relationship.

“We had gone for a drink. I mentioned to John that my daughter Amy had gone through a big change in her life. She wanted a new direction and was looking for a new job. He said there was a summer job at the Yard as a temporary filing clerk.

“Amy has a degree in sociology and politics so she was really over-qualified. But because of the situation she was in she decided to give it a go.

“I asked John who to contact and he told me where to send her CV and he’d forward it on. It was a case of him acting like a post box. It goes on in business and politics all the time.

“She went through the formal appointment process and at the end of it was given a professional role with a full career structure. She has stayed there. She likes the people. She has been promoted. It has proved to be a good match.” There was a full Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) inquiry — both she and Yates were exonerated.

Yates quit the Yard when the investigation was launched. Six months later, the IPCC cleared him. He went to Bahrain to oversee the reform of that country’s police force and has now returned.

“I don’t think John should have gone. There was nothing in the allegations against him. It would have blown over,” says Wallis.

The other senior officer to lose his job who had a close relationship with Wallis was Met commissioner between 2009 and 2011, Sir Paul Stephenson.

“It was football with Paul as well,” he says. When Wallis decided to quit the newspaper business he linked up again with Stephenson. He set up a PR consultancy, Chamy Media, which promptly landed a contract with the Yard to provide “strategic communication advice and support”.

“I was contacted by the Yard’s veteran director of public affairs Dick Fedorcio. I had obviously had a good relationship with Dick when I was in Fleet Street. He had worked with the press for 14 years. He said the Yard were keen to get advice on how to get their message across to the mass tabloid market public and I should bid for the contract.”

Fedorcio also invited people from leading PR firms Bell Pottinger and Hanover to submit rival bids for the contract but it was awarded to Wallis.

“It was about tabloid communication skills. I was to advise those guys about explaining what was happening so ordinary tabloid readers could understand how and why investigations were taking place and not be against the police. I understood the language of the Met, the tabloid press and the public and could tell them how to get their message across.” It was a good fit.

Wallis was paid £24,000 by the Met between October 2009 and September 2010. He regularly met senior officers including Yates and Sir Paul and offered them advice on handling stories. “That was what they wanted.”

After the IPCC announced it was to investigate the arrangement, Fedorcio resigned in March 2012.

The closeness of Wallis with the higher echelons of Scotland Yard came under scrutiny again in 2011 when it emerged that Sir Paul had accepted a free five-week stay worth £12,000 at Champneys, an exclusive health spa in Tring, Hertfordshire. Wallis was also working as a PR consultant for the resort at the time.

“It was nothing to do with me. I only found about that afterwards when the owner, Stephen Purdew, talked about it. I understand why Paul went there. He was recovering from an operation on his leg (to remove a pre-cancerous tumour) and was desperate to get back to full fitness and back to work.

“When I did find out about it afterwards, I did feel it might look bad. I would have advised him not to go,” says Wallis. Sir Paul resigned in 2011. He was later cleared of misconduct by the IPCC.

“To me, their resignations, and much of the way the police and the Crown Prosecution Service have acted since, is all about the politicisation of the police. Instead of remaining independent, the powers that be have allowed themselves to be caught up in the zeitgeist. There was a feeding frenzy; some good men lost their jobs and I believe what followed in the Weeting/Elvedon operations is part of the same thing’.

Wallis readily accepts that there were wrongs committed and mistakes made by the press in the way information was gathered. But he believes the system has now been cleansed.

Since he has been cleared, he has received goodwill messages from politicians, colleagues and celebrities.

He is now a Twitter addict (@neilwallis1) with 2,600 followers. Piers Morgan tweeted from America: “Cry freedom for Wolfie” and rang from New York to organise a bottle of champagne for him when Wallis had messaged he was in a London restaurant.

But he pays his biggest tribute to his family: Gaye, 58, Amy, 29, and Charlie, 19. ‘The impact on them has been massive. It has been easier for me because I expected the journalistic pack on my doorstep. “But my wife is angry. I first went out with Gaye 40 years ago this month. The fact she is still here after what she has been through for the past 20 months is a tribute to her forbearance. She is a fabulous woman.”

Wallis also talks about his concern for the journalists still held on bail.

“Police have to do their job, but I really find it very hard to believe that it was necessary to carry out a 6am raid when they arrested seven-month-pregnant Tina Weaver last week.

“She’s no longer even in newspapers, who knows what that kind of stress could do? Her partner was away overnight and she has a young son, who must have been terrified.

“I just hope neither Tina nor any of the other three arrested have to endure this for month after month with no resolution as I did.”

“One of very few things that have hurt is an appalling lie that has floated around Fleet Street that the police/CPS only decided on No Further Action in my case because I had ‘helped with their inquiries’ into colleagues.

“That could not be further from the truth. As any crime reporter who still has a police contact talking to them can find out …

“After 30 years, I’m inured to the bitchiness of Fleet Street, but even by its standard that’s a lie that’s beyond the pale.”

Wallis is unimpressed by the post-Leveson deal over press regulation. “I think the compromise over statute and the royal charter is a disaster. You can’t be a little bit pregnant: when politicians get any say over a free press after 318 years of freedom, then it is lost for ever.

And whatever David Cameron says, it’s like that old saying ‘If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it’s a duck’. Well, the same applies to this — however it’s dressed up, this is a press law.

“Interestingly, YouGov has done a survey which shows that while the public does want stricter regulation of the press, by a significant majority they don’t want politicians involved.

“They know the powerful always strive to control the media. This is a major step towards that possibility.”

Yet Wallis still believes journalists can work closely with the police. “The police must be seen to be accountable and for that to happen, the media must be given access to the people at the top.”

And his belief in journalism means Wallis remains a man driven to relaunch his career. He has made frequent television and radio appearances in recent months, written a series of outspoken columns for the Huffington Post and is studying for an MA in criminology.

“I believe I have a great understanding of how the media work and not just at the tabloid end. I firmly believe there is a role for me as a commentator and I want to contribute again in the workplace,” he says. The Wolfman wants to show he still has his bite.

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