Rupert Murdoch personally phoned Rebekah Brooks's secretary around the time it was revealed the News of the World was to close to ask her to make sure her boss did not resign, a jury at the Old Bailey has heard.
Cheryl Carter, 49, told jurors at the phone-hacking trial on Wednesday that she took the call around the time of the announcement on Thursday 7 July 2011 that the tabloid was to shut after 168 years, with the loss of around 200 jobs.
"Mr Rupert Murdoch called me. He wanted to make sure I was looking after her. He said 'please do not let Rebekah resign'," Carter said.
Asked by her defence counsel did she pass the message on, she replied: "Yes, Mr Rupert Murdoch was concerned about Rebekah."
Carter worked with Brooks for 16 years and became very close to her boss who had included her as a beneficiary on her insurance policy. Carter said Brooks would confide in her but she was "not scared of her" and would "stand up to her" when she thought she was wrong.
Asked whether she knew about Brooks's clandestine on-off relationship with Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World and David Cameron's former spin doctor, Carter said: "No, I wasn't."
Asked by Trevor Burke QC if she would ever commit a crime for Brooks, Carter responded: "No I would not commit a crime for Rebekah Brooks."
Even if she was innocent? "I would not commit a crime for Rebekah Brooks." Has she ever asked you to? "No, she had not", Carter replied.
Carter has been charged with conspiring together with Brooks, the former News International chief executive, to conceal seven boxes of notebooks retrieved from the archive of the company and labelled as belonging to her boss between 6 and 9 July 2011.
She has denied the charge and has told jurors the boxes were mislabelled and contained her own notebooks of cuttings of her beauty column in the Sun along with some college work. Brooks has also denied the alleged conspiracy.
Carter has also denied giving Brooks a false alibi after claiming in her first interview with police in November 2011 that Brooks was not in the office on 8 July, the day she asked for the boxes from the archive. Mobile phone data is said to suggest both Brooks and Carter were at the newspaper offices that day.
She told jurors on Wednesday that she had made an innocent mistake, that she had just got off a 24-hour flight from Australia when five police arrived at her door. She said she had no diary to help her recall dates and had got the dates of a boot camp holiday that Brooks had booked out by one week.
"I did get it wrong and I'm sorry and I apologise," Carter said.
The jury has previously heard that Carter took the boxes to her home with the help of her son Nick and discarded her notebooks.
She said she did not discuss the boxes with Brooks and her boss did not instruct her to retrieve the boxes.
On Tuesday, the jury were told by Burke that they could not find one of Carter or Brooks innocent and the other guilty because this was not permitted by law as the charge they face is one of conspiracy which requires a minimum of two people.
Asked by Burke did she take any of the contents of those boxes to Brooks's Oxfordshire home, Carter said: "No, not all all."
She said she did take eight crates of personal material, including information about Brooks's surrogate pregnancy and her banking information, to Jubilee Barn in Oxfordshire on 28 July but all the material in these boxes had been packed under the supervision of Jane Viner, head of facilities at News International. Viner had also ordered the courier to take the boxes to Carter's mother-in-law's garage in the days before.
Carter was also quizzed about a visit to Jubilee Barn on 10 July, the day News of the World closed.
She told jurors Brooks was with James Murdoch, the then News International chairman, at his home that day and she had been asked by Brooks to go Jubilee Barn to see if her mother, Deborah Weir, was okay. "I'm fond of Debs and Rebekah is her only daughter."
She said she took Weir some jam but denied bringing any of the boxes to the Barn.
Carter was on the verge of tears on several occasions as she was asked about her arrest on 6 January 2012, just days before she and her family were due to emigrate to Australia.
She was then arrested and taken to a police station where she was swabbed and put into a cell for four or five hours, jurors heard. Her passport was also confiscated and it still had not been returned, she said.
The previous November Carter had been questioned at home and had told Brooks she had been quizzed about archive boxes.
Was Brooks concerned, she was asked? "No," said Carter.
Asked how she felt when she was charged, Carter said: "I couldn't quite believe it."
Did she ever believe you had done anything wrong? "No, I did not," she replied.
Responding to questions from prosecutor Andrew Edis, Carter denied "inventing" part of her story in relation to getting the archive boxes and "lying" about Brooks's whereabouts on the day she retrieved the boxes from the archive.
The court heard that Carter wanted to retrieve the boxes to see if she had archived any documents in relation to a make-up brand she had launched when working at the Sun after a trademark dispute arose.
Edis put it to her that this was the first time she had raised this and it was not part of her defence case statement or part of a witness statement given to police when she was questioned.
"Is that what you actually remember or is something you have invented?" Edis asked. "I haven't invented it," she said, explaining that she recalled this was a reason for getting the boxes out on 8 July 2011 after being shown emails relating to the legal dispute.
The jury has previously heard that 8 July was a busy one at News International. The day before, James Murdoch had announced the NoW was closing and Brooks was addressing angry staff at a "town hall meeting" on 8 July to meet their concerns about 200 job losses.
Edis asked Carter why she had said in her police interview that she had chosen a "quiet day" to retrieve the boxes, a day that Brooks was, she had said, away on a boot camp holiday. "You did it on the busiest day of the year," Edis said.
Carter admitted that she had got it wrong when she told police Brooks had been away on a boot camp and that was "stupid" but denied it "really was a lie".
She told jurors that although 8 July was busy, it was busy for executives. "It's not a lie, because if Rebekah is in meetings all this time, she could not have been tasking me."
Edis put it to her that the boot camp was scheduled for 25 July, after Brooks and Carter had left News International. Therefore, she couldn't have misremembered that she went to the archive when Brooks was away because there never was a time when she went to boot camp and Carter was in the office. "So it really was a lie," said Edis. Carter responded: "It wasn't a lie, I got it wrong and I look stupid and I apologise."
Asked what her thought process was on 8 July, when Brooks was holding the town hall meetings, Carter said: "My thought process was I feel sad for people who have lost their jobs, However, I must go and get the boxes."
Carter was also challenged by the prosecution on her account of what she had placed in the archive boxes. It was put to her that there were discrepancies between the different accounts she has given of what was in the boxes, but she denied that was the case.
Apart from the 30 notebooks that she claimed were hers, Carter had said the boxes contained two diaries, three notebooks and two black notebooks. The latter later transpired to be Filofaxes. Carter said she called those notebooks.
Edis went on to demonstrate how the archive boxes could have fitted much more than the 30 notebooks Carter claimed to have placed inside, along with the miscellaneous items belonging to Brooks.
On Tuesday, Carter had demonstrated to the jury that she could have put five or six A3 notepads into the boxes.
Edis showed the jury the boxes could take 10 notebooks. If the seven boxes contained 30 of Carter's notepads plus the items belonging to Brooks, Edis asked: "Did you fill three empty boxes?"
She replied: "No, I did not."
Carter was accused of giving a "dishonest" account of communications with Brooks after police turned up at her home in November 2011 to search for potential evidence in relation to the archive boxes.
Carter told jurors that she had phoned Brooks but had not told her that the archive books were labelled as belonging to the former chief executive. This was, she said, because "she would have thought I was mad. She had no idea I had done that."
Asked if she had told Brooks in the conversation if she had told police she retrieved the boxes when she was at boot camp, Carter replied she did not.
Carter said she didn't "feel she needed to tell" her about the conversation with police because she thought whatever they were investigating would be cleared up and the matter would go away.
"I'm going to suggest that evidence is dishonest," said prosecutor Andrew Edis. "No, Mr Edis, I'm not a dishonest person. I was brought up very well."
Edis put it to her that she had not been asked to downsize material in the archive after receiving an email from the NI archivist advising her they were moving the archive from Wapping to Enfield.
"No, you are very wrong there," Carter said, explaining she had read the email.
Carter denies one charge of conspiring with Brooks to conceal material from police investigating News International between 6 July 2011 and 9 July 2011.
The trial continues.
