Scotland Yard chief thought cash for honours investigation had similarities to All the President's Men, according to admirer
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Richard Nixon leaves the White House after resigning in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Photograph: /Corbis
A curious aspect of the phone hacking scandal is the contrast between the lackadaisical police investigation into the News of the World and what were described as "gestapo" tactics during their cash-for-honours inquiry.
In his Commons speech on Wednesday, which has been panned even by his friends for being partisan and self-serving, Gordon Brown had one of the best lines mocking the police.
This is what the former prime minister told MPs about the conduct of Assistant Commissioner John Yates after the Guardian revealed in July 2009 that News International had paid more than £1m to victims of phone hacking:
Already, in August 2009, Assistant Commissioner Yates of Scotland Yard had taken only eight hours – less time, I may say, than he spent dining with the people he should have been investigating – to reject pre-emptively a further police inquiry.
This contrasts with the zeal with which Yates and his team carried out their investigation five years ago into allegations that Labour offered peerages in return for loans to the party. Sarah Helm, the wife of Tony Blair's former chief of staff Jonathan Powell, accused the police of "gestapo tactics" when they carried out a dawn raid on the Downing Street adviser Ruth Turner.
This is what Helm wrote in the Observer in July 2007:
Yates's officers had recently turned up at some unearthly hour at the home of Jonathan's colleague, Ruth Turner. As if she were some street criminal, ready to scarper, Ruth's home was swooped upon by Yates's men and she was forced to dress in the presence of a female police officer. Her house was searched from top to bottom, computers removed, and she was driven off to a police station. And then there was a tip-off to the press.
I know one shouldn't make these comparisons, but I was writing about Nazi Germany right then, and I couldn't help think: Gestapo tactics! Pick on the vulnerable, preferably a single woman, living alone. No matter that you may have nothing on her that will ultimately stand up in court, give her a scare.
The lengthy investigation by Yates and his team ended after the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to press charges. But those familiar with the inquiry say that Yates pursued the investigation with such vigour because he thought it had echoes of Watergate.
One veteran observer of the Westminster scene, who is no fan of Labour, told me of a meeting with Yates:
I remember going to see John Yates early on during the cash-for-honours investigation. We discussed All the President's Men [the book by the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who broke the Watergate story.] Yates was very struck by the comparison – he really did think there were echoes of Watergate.
Unlike Watergate, no charges were laid against anyone in Downing Street and Tony Blair was not forced to resign and fly home on Marine One.
The only comparison was a break-in. The Watergate scandal started with the famous burglary at the Watergate complex. The cash-for-honours investigation reached a high – or a low depending on your view – when police swooped on a young woman in the early hours. They did, of course, have a warrant.