ALTHOUGH IT WAS towards the end of normal office hours by the time Wick handed over the prized disk, the clock was already ticking.
One of the conditions of the deal that Wick had insisted upon was that the Telegraph had just ten days to analyse the data and begin publishing it. If the newspaper did not go ahead with publication by the tenth day, the deal would lapse and Wick would have the right to approach other media organizations.
Evans and Winnett knew that the scale of the task ahead was nothing short of Herculean. The million or so pages of documents contained on the disk had to be read individually (they could not be automatically searched by any computer program because much of the information was handwritten) and there was, of course, no guide book to point out where the stories could be found.
While the public would no doubt want to know what the most high-profile politicians had been up to, it was just as likely that the biggest scandals might involve anonymous backbench MPs. So every single document would have to be read, analysed, checked against public records (such as Land Registry property deeds or electoral rolls) and cross-referenced with other MPs to check whether, for example, several MPs were illegally claiming rent for the same address.
In normal circumstances, a newspaper that wanted to investigate possible expenses fraud by an MP might expect a reporter to take several weeks to gather the necessary evidence. The Telegraph faced the prospect of carrying out more than sixty such investigations each day if it was going to check every MP’s expenses file before the publication date.
And the problems didn’t end there. There remained a very real threat that the Telegraph’s offices could be raided by the police, and the disk seized, if the parliamentary authorities got wind of what was going on. Despite Arthur Wynn Davies’s confidence that the newspaper had not broken any laws, and that the disk did not constitute stolen property, it was an argument that might have to be settled in a court of law if Parliament chose to dispute it, with the disk as Exhibit A.
To make matters even more complicated, two other newspapers – the Sunday Express and the Sun – had also seen part of the database. If word leaked out that the Telegraph had secured the rights to the disk, it was a near-certainty that one or both of the newspapers would print ‘spoiler’ stories about MPs whose files they had looked at, beating the Telegraph to the punch.
Two things were clear: the Daily Telegraph would have to put together a team of reporters capable of pulling off what might be the most ambitious newspaper investigation in history; and they would have to work in total secrecy to ensure no other newspapers – or the police – knew what was going on.
A newspaper office is never the best place to try to keep a secret, given that its staff spend their entire working lives ferreting out gossip, and journalism is such an incestuous industry that even the most closely guarded secrets become common knowledge across London in a matter of minutes if more than a handful of people know what’s going on. So Evans and Winnett, sitting down that evening to discuss how to prevent news of the investigation leaking from the building, decided on a brilliantly simple strategy: they would lie through their teeth. Apart from the handful of people directly involved in the investigation, everyone else who had cause to ask what the team was up to would be sold a cover story. As long as everyone on the team stuck to the script, it just might work.
Clearly the investigation team would need to work in a separate room, away from prying eyes, and after a couple of quick phone calls Evans secured the use of a room in a back corridor which was normally used for staff training. It was called, appropriately enough, Training Room 4.
‘If we’re going to be using a training room we might as well tell everyone we’re involved in a training exercise,’ Evans suggested. Winnett agreed, though both realized luck would play a big part in keeping such a huge project under wraps.
The idea that several reporters might suddenly be pulled away from their normal duties to take part in a training exercise was by no means implausible. The Telegraph was introducing a series of radical changes to the way reporters were required to work, not least a move towards self-publishing on the internet, meaning a reporter would write a story and publish it online with little input from anyone else. Reporters were in the process of being shown how to do this, and so any awkward questions about why a team of reporters had been asked to drop everything for a training exercise could be fobbed off with excuses about ‘orders from on high’.
The next job was to choose a team of reporters who could get the job done.
Holly Watt was an obvious choice, having already begun looking at the sample disk. She was acutely aware that the Telegraph could be sitting on Britain’s equivalent of Watergate, having recently spent a four-month sabbatical working at the Washington Post, the newspaper that carried out the political investigation against which all others are measured.
Winnett felt the team needed another parliamentary reporter to help steer the investigation through the political minefield ahead, and Rosa Prince, who had taken the crucial first phone call from Gewanter and who could be relied upon to pursue a story with ruthless vigour, was next on the team sheet.
Christopher Hope, the Whitehall editor, would also be brought on board. A veteran of political sleaze stories, he had recently helped expose the existence of the emails that led to the resignation of Damian McBride. Having worked on the Telegraph for six years, Hope was also the longest-serving Telegraph reporter on the team. In the long days which lay ahead, it would be his boyish enthusiasm that would often help keep spirits up as energy levels flagged.
Gordon Rayner, the Daily Telegraph’s chief reporter, had already been told about the newspaper’s pursuit of the disk by Evans, who was keen to make sure he was not about to take any annual leave. A veteran of the Sun and the Daily Mail, Rayner had often been called upon to organize teams of reporters covering different elements of major news stories, and would be ideally suited to helping oversee the expenses investigation in what would be a high-pressure environment. At thirty-eight, he was the oldest of the reporters chosen to work on the story.
The youngest would be Jon Swaine, a 24-year-old former Telegraph graduate trainee regarded as a rising star at the paper because of his thoroughness and professionalism. This was his opportunity to prove that he could cut it at the highest level of journalism – an opportunity he would grab with both hands in the weeks to come.
The final member of the reporting team would be Martin Beckford, the newspaper’s social and religious affairs correspondent. He had repeatedly proved his ability to dig out front-page stories buried inside weighty official documents, making him a natural choice for the work to come. Beckford would have some of the most memorable exchanges with MPs.
Once the seven-strong reporting team had been decided upon, Evans and Matthew Bayley began telling those reporters who did not know about the disk that they would be required for an important, and urgent, training session the next day at 8 a.m. Bayley struggled to keep a straight face as the reporters tried to hide their annoyance at having to disrupt their plans – and come in early – for yet more training. He couldn’t wait to break the real news to them.
Christopher Hope was dashing for a 7 p.m. train home to Norfolk when he received an email on his BlackBerry asking him to call Bayley. As he boarded the carriage, he rang the news editor, who said: ‘Sorry for the short notice, but could you get in early tomorrow morning for a training session?’
‘How early?’
‘Eight o’clock.’
Bugger, thought Hope. It would mean getting up at five thirty to catch an early enough train to be back in London on time.
‘OK,’ he replied, cursing his luck. Bloody training sessions!
Jon Swaine, who had been working an early shift that day, was at the Barbican Theatre being thoroughly confused by a play which, he discovered when the performance began, was in French. He picked up the email message from Bayley during the interval, replied that he would be there, and thought no more of it.
Beckford, meanwhile, unwittingly almost talked his way out of being involved in the biggest story of his career.
‘What are you up to tomorrow?’ Evans asked him.
‘I’m going to Oxford University for a conference on the social impact of couples who have kids without getting married,’ Beckford replied. He had been looking forward to a pleasant day out of town and a leisurely lunch at St Hugh’s College.
‘Well, I’d like you to come into the office instead, for a training session on self-publishing. You’ll need to be here at eight. Can you do it?’
‘That’s going to be difficult, because it’ll mean getting up at five,’ said Beckford, exaggerating slightly. ‘Does it have to be that early?’
‘Well, yes. Can you make it?’
‘OK.’
As Evans walked off, Beckford turned to a colleague and moaned: ‘I’m going to miss out on a great story tomorrow because I’ve got to come in for a bloody training session at eight. I don’t see why it’s got to be so early. It’s ridiculous.’
Meanwhile, other arrangements had to be made to ensure the smooth running of the paper in the absence of so many reporters. In Parliament, Andrew Porter, the Telegraph’s political editor, and James Kirkup, its political correspondent, both already in on the secret, were asked to hold the fort and deflect any questions from other lobby correspondents as to the whereabouts of Winnett and Prince. Porter was also earmarked as one of the front men of the investigation, and would later represent the Telegraph in countless television and radio interviews while the rest of the team carried on digging behind closed doors.
Evans and Winnett also had to find a way of copying the disk so that each member of the team would have their own copy when the investigation began the following day.
‘Do you have any idea how to copy one of these things?’ Evans asked.
‘Er, no – do you?’
The pair trotted up to the second floor of the building, looking for the head of the IT department. He was on holiday, it turned out, so Evans asked for his deputy, Toby Wright.
‘I’m going to tell you something you mustn’t repeat to anyone in any circumstances,’ Evans told the mystified Wright. ‘Have you heard the story doing the rounds about a disk being offered to newspapers which contains all the details of MPs’ expenses?’
‘Oh yeah,’ he replied.
‘Well, this is it.’
Evans and Winnett, who had not yet loaded up the disk, feared that it might be encrypted or password-protected in some way. To their immense relief, when Wright connected it to his computer, they saw that a couple of mouse clicks was all it took to start delving into the MPs’ claims.
Evans then explained to a startled-looking Wright that the disk needed to be copied before first thing the next day.
‘But I’ve got to leave in five minutes to pick my kids up,’ said Wright.
Evans smiled. ‘You might have to make other arrangements.’
Wright agreed to stay late, making two copies of the disk before showing Winnett and Holly Watt how to make more copies, each of which took an hour to complete because of the sheer volume of material.
In the meantime, Evans had to recruit two final members of the team.
Lewis had already decided that the expenses story would be perfect for the newspaper not only in print but also online; indeed, it was viewed at that stage as being more ideally suited to the website than the print version, as the receipts of every MP could be published online to enable members of the public to search for their local MP’s expenses. To this end Ian Douglas, the newspaper’s digital production editor, and Duncan Hooper, digital news editor, were attached to the investigation with the task of preparing the expenses claims for online publication in their entirety. They would begin by putting the expenses of every member of the Cabinet online on the day the first newspaper stories were published, with every MP’s expenses to be published ten days to two weeks after that.
Or at least, that was the plan …