LAWYER FOR EX-TABLOID EDITOR SAYS CLIENT KNEW NOTHING OF HACKING

In opening defense arguments, a lawyer for former News of the World editor Andy Coulson told jurors today (Tuesday) that his client “was never party to any agreement to hack phones — whatever others might have been doing on his watch.” Timothy Langdale insisted that Coulson, who eventually became Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications director but was forced to step down when the hacking scandal broke, oversaw a newsroom in which “many thousands of pieces of information” flooded in every week “many of which never got in the paper at all.” Reporters working at the tabloid, he added, kept their sources secret even from colleagues. In fact, Langdale claimed, Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective convicted of hacking phones for the News of the World even hacked Coulson’s phone.