Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson said "brilliant" after listening to an intimate voicemail message left on James Bond actor Daniel Craig's phone by Sienna Miller, the phone-hacking trial has heard.
Coulson then instructed the reporter who had hacked Craig's phone to make a dummy tape in order to conceal the origin of the recorded voicemail, in which Miller declared her love for the James Bond star, the court was told on Tuesday.
Dan Evans, a former News of the World and Sunday Mirror journalist who has pleaded guilty to intercepting voicemail messages, told the Old Bailey that Coulson became "very animated" and said "brilliant" when he heard the message.
Evans said Coulson listened to the recording after the reporter had intercepted an intimate voicemail left by Miller on Craig's phone, which appeared to show that they were having an affair at a time in 2005 when she was going out with Jude Law: "Hi, it's me. I can't speak, I'm at the Groucho with Jude. I love you."He added that Coulson told him to make a copy of the message, stick it in a Jiffy bag, and send it to the front gate at the News of the World's offices in Wapping, east London.
Coulson said security staff at the front gate "would then ring up and say this has been sent in anonymously", according to Evans. He told the jury that a colleague collected the Jiffy bag and came back to the office, expressing mock surprise.
Evans said he later went to Craig's London home to confront him about the affair with Miller and the actor denied it.
The court heard that the News of the World ran a story with Evans's byline on 8 October 2005 over three pages revealing the affair.
Evans was asked who else knew about phone hacking at the News of the World. He listed 10 names including Coulson, former news editor James Weatherup and eight others who cannot be identified for legal reasons. Weatherup has pleaded guilty to a phone hacking conspiracy, the jury has heard.
Coulson denies a charge of conspiring to intercept communications.
Evans told the court he would like to apologise to all the people whose privacy he infringed.
"Andy wanted to hear the tape," Evans told the court describing how another journalist on the paper was also in the vicinity when it was played.
"I do not know whether I played it to both of them at the same time. Certainly Andy was there … and I played the tape a couple of times and listened to it," Evans said.
Evans continued: "Andy got very animated." He told the jury: "Everybody was having a bit of an adrenaline kick."
He said another journalist on the paper then grabbed him by the elbow and congratulated him. "You're a company man now Dan.""He [Coulson] wanted to preserve the tape but not in the original recording. So he said to me basically, 'We need to make a copy of the tape, stick it in a Jiffy bag, have it send down to the front gate [where security worked] and have them ring up and say this has been handed in anonymously," Evans said.
Evans went on to tell the court that he made the copy of the tape using two Dictaphones and that some time afterwards the Jiffy bag was dispatched to the courier desk at the front gate. Another News of the World colleague then walked into the office "with a mock surprise and said 'Hey, look what I have'".
The former News of the World reporter, whom the jury heard has pleaded guilty to three other charges and become a prosecution witness, destroyed the original tape.
Earlier the jury were told how Evans had used what was described as the "double tap" method of hacking phones – using a combination of two phones to trigger voicemail of the target's phone.
He had told how journalists on the paper would get the "proverbial rocket" if they came in on a Tuesday morning, the start of the week on the Sunday tabloid, without stories.
Before hacking Craig's phone, Evans had been sent a "monstrous" email from a colleague advising him that if he didn't "come up with a front-page story you may as well jump off a cliff".
Evans went home "feeling terrorised". He had been confronted by the colleague, who cannot be named for legal reasons, who had said to him: "Your USP [unique selling point] is the phone hacking … I suggest you fucking well get on with some more.The jury was shown a police document of call data related to Evans "double taps", which showed hacks or attempt hacks of the phones of Cilla Black, Sir Trevor McDonald, the agent of footballer Steven Gerrard, Kate Moss's PA, Ian Monk, the PR for Wayne Rooney, Rhys Ifans, Kerry Katona and interior designer Kelly Hoppen.
Evans said he got rumbled when he hacked Hoppen's phone.
Coulson, a former communications director for David Cameron, and Rebekah Brooks, the former head of News International, are among seven people on trial for offences related to a phone-hacking conspiracy, paying public officials for stories and alleged perversion of the course of justice. All deny the charges.
Evans also told the Old Bailey jury on Tuesday how he destroyed all evidence of his illicit activities on the day that the News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman was arrested in 2006.
He said there was a "palpable sense of shock" in the office that day and described how he went to his desk and proceeded to rip the ribbon out of micro-cassette recordings he had made of intercepted voicemail messages.
Evans added that he met another journalist on the paper in the office lift on the day Goodman and the paper's private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were arrested.
His colleague, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: "'No more hokey stuff', hokey being a reference to voicemail stuff."
He said: "I went upstairs. There was a palpable sense of shock. I proceeded to get rid of all the evidence I could get my hands on. This included voicemail recordings. I destroyed them – they were on micro-cassettes … I took each of them and sucked the ribbon out and snapped it into little bits and stuck it into a big blue recycling bin in the office."
Evans said he also destroyed records of mobile phone call data of people he had targeted and shredded them, as well as ripping up notebooks in case they had any record of hacking.
He told the court that he put the lists of celebrity pin codes that he had into an envelope and "wrapped it up in black gaffer tape, took it home and stuck it into a mate's loft".
Years later he retrieved the list and in "a fairly foolish moment of madness" used the list and tried to hack Hoppen's phone. She had already reset her pin and the hack failed.
Evans, who has pleaded guilty to making a false witness statement in relation to the hacking of Hoppen's phone, said he got a "stone cold shock" when the call was traced back to him.
He was suspended from reporting but remained on the News of the World payroll and was later put on gardening leave. He lost his job when the paper closed in 2011.
The prosecution also questioned him about any past offences. He said he had been "busted" for possession of amphetamine when he was a student and again for cocaine "seven years ago".
Asked how extensive his drug use was, Evans told the jury "cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine, recreational drugs played a part in my life since the mid 1980s" and that he had smoked his "first spliff" when he was 14. He said "happily" drugs were no longer part of this life.
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