Is this Armageddon for Murdoch and NewsCorp?

Neville Thurlbeck, former News of the World chief reporter, arrested

Operation Weeting officers re-arrest former NoW chief reporter, this time on suspicion of intimidation of a witness





Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 March 2012 17.32 GMT
Article history



Former NoW chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck has been re-arrested by Operation Weeting officers investigating phone hacking. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images


Neville Thurlbeck, the former chief reporter of the News of the World, has been arrested on suspicion of intimidation of a witness.


He was arrested by appointment at a central London police station at 4pm on Wednesday by officers working on the Operation Weeting investigation into phone hacking.


"A 51-year-old man was arrested by appointment at a central London police station at approximately 16:00 hrs today by officers from Operation Weeting, the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] inquiry into the phone-hacking of voicemails," said Scotland Yard in a statement.


"He was arrested on suspicion of intimidation of a witness (contrary to Section 51 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) and encouraging or assisting an offence (contrary to Section 46 of the Serious Crime Act 2007)."


It is the second time Thurlbeck has been arrested as part of Operation Weeting.


In a statement the Metropolitan police said: "This is Operation Weeting arrest 'A'. He was previously arrested on 5 April 2011 (then aged 50) on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications (contrary to Section 1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977) and unlawful interception of voicemail messages (contrary to Section 1 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000)".


The arrest comes a day after Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, and her husband Charlie Brooks were arrested and bailed on "suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice" in relation to the same police investigation.


Four others were arrested including the director of security at News International and two other non-editorial staff believed to have worked on contract for the Murdoch publishing group.

Phone-hacking: how the 'rogue reporter' defence slowly crumbled

A series of denials by News International after the jailing of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulciaire became harderto sustain




Dan Sabbagh

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 March 2012 22.02 GMT
Article history




After the jailing of News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman, above, News International downplayed the significance of what had happened. Photograph: Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images


Within weeks of the 2007 jailing of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire for hacking into the phones of advisers to Prince William and Prince Harry, News International was denying and downplaying the significance of what had happened.

It was the single "rogue reporter" defence that ran through years of public denials which stepped up when the Guardian first said hacking was likely to have been widespread in July 2009 and that MPs from all parties were among the targets.

But it was a series of denials that became increasingly hard to sustain.

Les Hinton, former chief executive of News International, was asked by a parliamentary select committee in March 2007, two months after Mulcaire went to jail, whether News International had conducted "a full, rigorous internal inquiry" and whether he was "absolutely convinced that [the royal reporter] Clive Goodman was the only person who knew what was going on". His reply was confidently straightforward: "Yes, we have, and I believe he was the only person, but that investigation, under the new editor, continues."

The hacking issue largely disappeared until the Guardian returned to it in July 2009. At the tail end of a Friday afternoon, News International issued a statement with a point-by-point denial. Its journalists had not hacked into the phone of John Prescott, or various celebrities; neither had News of the World journalists hacked into "thousands" of mobile phones.

The triumphant conclusion read: "All of these irresponsible and unsubstantiated allegations against News of the World and other News International titles and its journalists are false."

The Murdoch publisher was prepared to make one concession to the Guardian report; that during a secret court action brought in 2008 by Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, it had made a six-figure payment as it had emerged he had been a victim of phone hacking.

Colin Myler, NoW editor, told the Press Complaints Commission in August 2009: "Our internal inquiries have found no evidence of involvement by News of the World staff other than Clive Goodman in phone-message interception beyond the email transcript which emerged in April 2008 during the Gordon Taylor litigation."

Those denials continued throughout 2010. A New York Times investigation into phone hacking in September of that year prompted a NoW statement: "We reject absolutely any suggestion there was a widespread culture of wrongdoing at the [paper]".

However, legal documents underlying a stream of civil claims brought successfully against the NoW on behalf of people ranging from the actor Jude Law to the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, and the singer Charlotte Church, alleged that the publisher was behind efforts to delete emails.

According to a claim brought by the hacking victims, in November 2009, News International allegedly discussed an "email deletion policy". Under a section marked "opportunity" its aim, it was said, was "to eliminate in a consistent manner across NI (subject to compliance with legal and regulatory requirements) emails that could be unhelpful in the context of future litigation in which an NI company is a defendant".

Subsequently it appears that some deletions of the email archive were carried out, for unknown reasons, with an estimated half a terrabyte of data (equivalent to 500 editions of Encyclopædia Britannica) eliminated. That prompted a behind-the-scenes row with Scotland Yard's hacking investigation, details of which leaked last July.

In a civil hearing in January 2012, Mr Justice Vos said it appeared that "a previously conceived plan to conceal evidence was put in train by News Group managers" shortly after the solicitor for the actor Sienna Miller had asked them to retain emails relating to phone hacking.

In October 2010 it was alleged that News International had destroyed all the old computers used by its journalists, including that of one reporter named in Miller's legal claim.

By last summer, the phone hacking narrative had fundamentally altered with the Guardian's revelation that voicemails sent to the Surrey teenager Milly Dowler had been targeted when she went missing in 2002. News International had already begun, gradually, to concede that the "rogue reporter" defence was unravelling.

And the Met police's phone hacking investigation Operation Weeting made the first arrests of NoW journalists on suspicion of intercepting communications. In July, the wave of revulsion that followed the Dowler story led to the closure of the Now, resignations of various senior executives including the chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, and heightened efforts by the company's management and standards committee to investigate any wrongdoing.

That paved the way for reconstruction of an archive of 300m emails, and greater co-operation in the phone hacking cases and the police enquiry.

In January this year, to help speed up the settlement of the phone hacking cases, News International agreed to what the presiding judge, Vos, said was an "admission of sorts" in which the NoW publisher conceded that unnamed employees and directors knew about wrongdoing and sought to conceal it.

That concealment, the agreed statement said, occurred, among other things, through "putting out statements [the NoW's publisher] knew to be false", and "destroying evidence of wrongdoing".

Even as recently as January this year, against that backdrop, Vos insisted that News International allow civil claimants to search three laptops and six desktops assigned to unnamed senior employees because there were "compelling questions" about whether the newspaper had "actively tried to get off scot-free" by destroying emails in the past.

The newspaper publisher, had, after a long period of denial, been forced to make wide-ranging disclosures, leading to the payout of millions of pounds in damages and costs in a string of civil actions. And two criminal enquiries – the Weeting and the Elveden inquiry, concerned with payments to public officials – continue.

Margaret Thatcher had a secret meeting with Rupert Murdoch at Chequers weeks before his 1981 purchase of the Times newspapers, newly released files show.

A note by her press secretary Bernard Ingham says the prime minister thanked Mr Murdoch for "keeping her posted".

But the contentious issue of whether to refer the bid to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission was not raised.

The official history of the Times had stated there was no direct contact between the pair at that stage.

The papers are being released by the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust.

The note by Mr Ingham (who became Sir Bernard in 1990) refers to a lunch with Mr Murdoch at Chequers on 4 January 1981, "to be treated Commercial - In Confidence".

It details the News Group chairman's intention to buy the Times newspapers and its supplements from the Thomson family.

Other papers among the archive reveal a hidden rebellion among backbench MPs, Ronald Reagan's doodles, and Margaret Thatcher's letter to a girl whose parents were divorcing.

'Reduction in manning'

According to Sir Bernard, Mr Murdoch told Mrs Thatcher he wished to make the Times operation profitable by introducing new technology and "a 25% reduction in overall manning".

During the meeting, he also stressed "the inevitability of progressing gradually".

Continue reading the main story Rupert Murdoch's letter in full

"Nor did he accept that printing outside London was an option; he was firmly of the opinion that the titles must be printed in London", wrote Sir Bernard.

The files show the key political question of whether Mr Murdoch's bid should be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) was not considered at the meeting.

At the time, Mr Murdoch already owned the Sun and News of the World newspapers.

The Fair Trading Act 1973 required that all significant newspaper takeovers be submitted to the MMC, unless the Secretary of State certified a paper was unprofitable and under threat of closure.

In the end, this clause enabled the purchase to go ahead without a referral because of major losses at the Times.

Redundancies had already been announced by the Thomsons, which owned the newspaper.

However, the Sunday Times had remained profitable during that period and was expected to return to financial health.

The takeover issue was first discussed in government at the cabinet economic strategy committee on 26 January 1981, chaired by Mrs Thatcher.

Recently-released minutes of the meeting show that the PM began by highlighting the exemption under the Fair Trading Act allowing Mr Murdoch's bid to avoid referral to the MMC.

Chris Collins, the only historian to have studied the papers closely having worked for Mrs Thatcher since 1992, told the BBC the meeting with Mr Murdoch at Chequers was clearly "fresh information".

"He's not setting out some great plan to absolutely transform the British newspaper industry. He's hinting at it, but he certainly doesn't go far in that direction."

Mr Collins said the meeting was "not really an attempt to do a political deal".

"His great asset, which he lays out before her, is that actually he's the only person who wants to keep the Times going... he's in a very strong position and he knows it."

'See you in New York'

Sir Bernard's note finally recalls how "the Prime Minister thanked Mr Murdoch for keeping her posted on his operations".

The pair met several times over the years including at an awards event in 1991
"She did no more than wish him well in his bid, noting the need for much improved arrangements in Fleet Street affecting manning and the introduction of new technology."

In a letter included in the archive, Mr Murdoch later wrote: "It was kind indeed of you to let me interrupt your weekend at Chequers 10 days ago and I greatly enjoyed seeing you again.

"The Times business is proceeding and the field has contracted down to only two or three of us. Thomsons will make up their mind in the next day or so.

"We hope to see you in New York on the 28 February."

Trouble in Wapping

Following his successful takeover of the Times newspapers, Mr Murdoch established the News International printing plant in Wapping, east London.

It was here in 1986 that violent protests broke out over working conditions and the dismissal of employees.

It became one of Britain's most bitter industrial disputes, lasting a year and effectively breaking the power wielded by print unions over the newspaper industry.

Along with the miners' strike of 1984-1985, the trouble in Wapping is often seen against a background of new legislation to curb the influence of the unions, brought in by Mrs Thatcher.

The revelation of the 1981 meeting between Mrs Thatcher and Mr Murdoch comes after recent evidence given to the Leveson Inquiry revealed an allegedly cosy relationship between the press and politicians in the UK.

The Leveson Inquiry was set up in July 2011 to examine relations between the press, politicians and police following the phone-hacking scandal at News International.

Mrs Thatcher's private papers are among a collection being made available to the public at the Churchill Archive Centre (CAC) in Cambridge and on the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.

The meeting between Mrs Thatcher and Mr Murdoch was specifically denied in The History of The Times, Volume VII, Graham Stewart's book covering events at the newspaper between 1981 to 2002.

The publishers of the Times have not commented on the release of the files.

By Amy Thomson and Philip Boroff - Mar 17, 2012 2:02 PM GMT
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James Murdoch, News Corp. (NWSA)’s deputy chief operating officer, will leave the board of Sotheby’s auction house, following demands he resign over his role in a U.K. phone-hacking scandal.

Murdoch, 39, this year already resigned from the board of GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) and as executive chairman of News Corp.’s U.K. publishing unit News International. Murdoch also faces calls from investors to step down from the board of News Corp. and as chairman of pay-TV company British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc. (BSY)





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James Murdoch, son of News Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch, is the chairman of BSkyB and previously oversaw News Corp.’s U.K. publishing unit. Photographer: Peter Foley/Bloomberg





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Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Wolff, author of the Rupert Murdoch biography "The Man Who Owns the News," talks about News Corp. Deputy Operating Officer James Murdoch's move to step down from the position of executive chairman of the company's News International unit.¶ He speaks with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock." Adam Johnson also speaks. (Source: Bloomberg)
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“His career is very much on pause. He’s been sort of discounted,” said Charlie Beckett, director of the media institute Polis at the London School of Economics. Still, Murdoch will probably try to hold onto his position at BSkyB as “at some point it starts to look like a confession of guilt and it would create such a sense of this is the end of everything for the Murdoch dynasty.”

U.K. lawmakers are preparing a report about Murdoch’s role in the scandal following testimony he gave that has been contradicted by former subordinates. The committee began its inquiry in July after Murdoch said lawmakers had been misled about the extent of phone hacking during a previous probe in 2009. It has questioned him twice for the new report, once alongside his father Rupert, News Corp.’s chief executive officer.

‘Core Responsibilities’

Murdoch will “focus on his core responsibilities at News Corp.,” according to a filing yesterday by Sotheby’s. (BID)

A News Corp. spokeswoman, Julie Henderson, declined to comment on the Sotheby’s departure, which takes effect May 8. Robert Fraser, a spokesman for London-based BSkyB, in which News Corp. owns a 39 percent stake, declined to comment as well.

CtW Group, an adviser to union-sponsored pension funds with more than $200 billion in assets, sought the dismissal of James Murdoch because of his handling of the phone-hacking scandal that erupted while he oversaw News Corp.’s U.K.-based publishing unit. The scandal makes Murdoch “ill-suited for service” on the boards of Glaxo, Sotheby’s and BSkyB, CtW said in January.

The scandal, which saw News Corp. journalists hack into the phones of politicians, celebrities and a murdered schoolgirl, has also drawn attention from regulators, who are examining the company’s fitness to hold a broadcasting license through its stake in BSkyB. U.K. watchdog Ofcom, which has the ability to revoke a broadcaster’s license, will determine whether the scandal has compromised News Corp.’s ability to manage the U.K.’s biggest pay-TV company.

Falling Short

On March 14, Murdoch told U.K. lawmakers he should have dug deeper to uncover the phone hacking at the company’s U.K. unit.

“I could have asked more questions, requested more documents and taken a more challenging and skeptical view of what I was told,” Murdoch said. “In this case, the approach fell short. But it is important to note that I did not turn a blind eye.”

The U.K. lawmakers are behind schedule with their report, as they debate how critical they can be ofMurdoch, two people with knowledge of the panel’s discussions said in February. Chairman John Whittingdale said in November he hoped to issue the report before Christmas 2011.

There is no question of Murdoch escaping criticism completely, the people said at the time. They said panel members are unimpressed by his statements that he was ignorant about what was going on at the News International unit which he ran from the end of 2007.

Arrests

The scandal has led to dozens of arrests. Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive officer of News International, was this week arrested a second time by London police as the year old phone-hacking probe turned to a possible cover up, according to a person familiar with the situation.

More than 20 people have been arrested as part of Operation Weeting, the phone-hacking investigation, and at least 10 have been questioned since the beginning of the year in a bribery probe.

Murdoch was a Sotheby’s director for two years. Sotheby’s, based in New York, said it benefited from Murdoch’s “broad- based marketing and brand management experience, his guidance regarding the company’s strategic initiatives in Asia and his insight into digital media,” according to the filing.

Murdoch remains News Corp.’s deputy chief operating officer and chairman and chief executive, international, focused on television businesses outside the U.S.

Protest Vote

News Corp. shareholders in October lodged a protest vote against Rupert Murdoch and his sons, following an annual meeting at which investors called for governance changes and an end to voting practices that cement the family’s control. James received the highest percentage of votes against his election to the board, at 35 percent.

In November, one third of BSkyB’s independent shareholders voted against James Murdoch’s re-election as chairman of the U.K.’s biggest pay-TV operator.

Lawmaker Tom Watson, a member of the U.K.’s Labour party and Parliament’s Culture Committee, said in July that Murdoch should face criminal charges and was unsuitable to be a director of BSkyB.

Murdoch “must be the first mafia boss in history who didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise,” Watson said last year.

Murdoch told lawmakers in November that News of the World editor Colin Myler failed to tell him in 2008 that phone hacking at the now-defunct tabloid was common. Myler and the newspaper’s lawyer Tom Crone have repeatedly insisted that they discussed evidence with Murdoch.

News Corp. Evidence of Obstruction Mounts Amid James Murdoch’s Resignation

By Greg Farrell - Mar 8, 2012 5:01 AM GMT
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Before Rebekah Brooks was arrested last year over her role in the News Corp. (NWSA) phone-hacking scandal, she staved off a police threat of obstruction charges related to the company unit she headed, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Based on a perceived lack of cooperation last April, Scotland Yard officials warned they would arrest Ian Burton, the lawyer Brooks retained to handle all police interactions with her unit, News International. Brooks, then the unit’s chief executive, defused the threat by sending two emissaries to Sue Akers, the director in charge of the police probe. They assured Akers the company would cooperate fully, the people said.





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James Murdoch, News Corp.'s chairman for Europe and Asia, at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg



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Pedestrians walk past the News Corp. offices in New York, U.S. Photographer: Paul Taggart/Bloomberg
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Court records and interviews with people briefed on the hacking investigation indicate the showdown between Brooks and Scotland Yard is just one episode in a persistent, five-year effort to contain the scandal in a manner the police and a U.K. judge have called obstructive.

“They are to be treated as deliberate destroyers of evidence,” said High Court Judge Geoffrey Vos at a Jan. 19 hearing in London at which the company announced it had settled 36 cases involving hacking victims.

Three months after the April police threat, Brooks was arrested on suspicion of corruption and conspiring to intercept communications. At that point, the company mounted an aggressive campaign to help the police identify any examples of illegal behavior.

Latest Disclosure

The latest disclosure in a series, made last week, involved a 2006 e-mail that detailed hacking at News of the World, the Sunday tabloid the company shut in response to the scandal. It showed Brooks, while editor of another News Corp. tabloid, The Sun, had been told by police that hacking victims were more widespread than the New York-based media company had admitted -- and included Brooks herself.

The e-mail, sent between two News of the World managers, suggests that from the beginning of the phone-hacking scandal, there was a conspiracy among senior executives to deceive the police and a separate, parliamentary probe into phone hacking.

The most significant of the revelations involves James Murdoch, the former News International executive chairman who, until last August, was widely considered to be the heir apparent to his father, Rupert Murdoch, as chief executive of News Corp.

E-Mail Deleted

In January of last year, eight days after police asked a News International tabloid to turn over any new evidence related to alleged voice-mail hacking, the company deleted a potentially incriminating e-mail from James Murdoch’s mailbox.

The younger Murdoch, currently deputy chief operating officer of News Corp., gave up his title as executive chairman of News International last week.

According to Linklaters LLP, the London law firm coordinating the company’s inquiry into alleged criminal behavior at News International, the deletion of James Murdoch’s e-mail files was part of a “stablisation and modernisation programme” put in motion by the company’s information technology department in January of last year.

The Murdoch e-mail was deleted 11 days before London police opened a new investigation into phone hacking at News International, a coincidence reported by The New York Times.

News International had asked HCL Technologies, a database management firm, about the possibility of “truncating a database” during the same month. HCL said in a letter to Parliament that it wasn’t able to fulfill the request.

The Plan

News International proceeded with its e-mail “stabilisation” plan until late January, when the police opened Operation Weeting, its current probe into phone hacking. At that point, the company halted its purge, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Earlier this year, a U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, reported that News International had sent out a directive on Jan. 12, 2011 -- three days before the deletion -- asking that employees retain their e-mails. News International spokeswoman Daisy Dunlop declined to comment on the Guardian report.

A hard copy of the deleted e-mail was subsequently discovered in the files of former News of the World editor Colin Myler. The note, from 2008, relayed to James Murdoch a lawyer’s warning that a union official suing the company was eager for the opportunity to demonstrate that phone-hacking was “rife” at News of the World, and not limited to a single “rogue” reporter, which had been the company’s official position.

Not Aware

Murdoch told Parliament on two occasions last year that he had never been made aware that phone-hacking was widespread at News of the World while he was chief executive of News International from 2007 to 2009.

After the note was discovered in December, Murdoch wrote to Parliament, saying he was confident he didn’t review the full e- mail at the time, given his quick response to it and the likelihood that he had received the message on his BlackBerry.

Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with News Corp. units in providing financial news and information.

Parliament may issue a report as early as this month on its probe into phone-hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. tabloids. Its last report on the topic, from 2010, expressed exasperation at what lawmakers described as “collective amnesia” on the part of News International’s top management.

Based on disclosures since the last report, the forthcoming one will probably be even more critical of James Murdoch, Brooks and other senior News International executives who testified last year before the House of Commons’ select committee on culture, media and sport.

Other Probes

In addition to the parliamentary inquiry, News International is the subject of three separate criminal probes involving phone hacking, bribery of police officers and computer hacking. News International is also in the process of settling civil cases brought by celebrities and other public figures who claim their voice-mail accounts were regularly hacked.

Judge Vos admonished the company in open court in January over what he described as an intentional effort to delete e- mails pertaining to phone hacking.

In addition to his accusations about destruction of evidence, he ordered several laptops that had escaped scrutiny to be examined. The judge said they might contain clues as to why so many of the company’s e-mails were deleted as victim lawsuits against News International piled up.

The company is also center stage in the Leveson Inquiry, a London tribunal led by Judge Brian Leveson. He is charged with looking into the ethics of the media in the U.K.

Read Aloud

It was at this inquiry on Feb. 27 that the e-mail about Brooks’ knowledge of phone hacking in 2006 was read aloud. It was sent in September of that year by Tom Crone, an in-house lawyer, to Andy Coulson, who was at that time editor of News of the World.

Crone wrote the note a month after the arrest of Clive Goodman, the Royal Family reporter whose arrest for hacking kicked off the scandal. At the time, the police were trying, unsuccessfully, to get News International to give them access to Goodman’s files.

The reporter and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who did contract work for News of the World, were charged with the illegal interception of voice mails belonging to members of the Royal Family and their staff.

The e-mail begins: “Here’s [what] Rebekah told me about info relayed to her by cops.”

Police Plan

According to the e-mail, a police representative had informed Brooks that phone-hacking victims extended beyond members of the Royal Family, which was the cause of the original investigation. The police were intent on bringing the case to trial, “to demonstrate the scale” of the phone-hacking effort.

Prosecutors never got the opportunity to present “the full case” because the two men charged, Goodman and Mulcaire, pleaded guilty.

In December, an outside lawyer who reviewed a cache of e- mails in 2007 between Goodman and five editors, including Coulson, expressed surprise at the “active involvement” displayed by News of the World editors in Goodman’s case.

The lawyer, Lawrence Abramson, who reviewed the e-mails when he was at the Harbottle & Lewis LLP law firm, testified at the Leveson inquiry that Goodman’s editors were “trying to influence the way the prosecution was being conducted -- or the way the defense was being conducted.”

“And there is one e-mail that’s been redacted that I thought would not reflect well on…” Abramson continued, before being stopped because his testimony was straying into areas under criminal investigation.

Coulson Blamed

The emergence of evidence suggesting Brooks’ awareness of the scope of phone-hacking comes at a time when she is under increased scrutiny.

Until last summer, blame for phone hacking had attached to Coulson, her successor at News of the World. In 2003, Brooks became editor of The Sun, which kept her clear of suspicion in phone hacking issues that arose in 2005 and 2006.

Her position has changed in recent months, as the police have arrested 10 current and former journalists from The Sun in connection with the widespread payment of police officers and other public officials for information.

Cheryl Carter, Brooks’ longtime personal assistant, was arrested on Jan. 6, on suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

At the Leveson inquiry last week, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Akers testified that Scotland Yard had uncovered a “network of corrupt officials” who had received payments from journalists at The Sun.

Culture of Bribes

“There also appears to have been a culture at the Sun of illegal payments, and systems have been created to facilitate those payments, whilst hiding the identity of the officials receiving the money,” Akers added.

David Wilson, Brooks’s spokesman, declined to comment on the police investigation.

A year ago, Brooks was in charge of the relationship between News International and Scotland Yard. Beginning in January 2011, when Operation Weeting was started, she wouldn’t let Akers or her detectives deal directly with executives at News International, according to Akers’ testimony before Parliament last summer. Scotland Yard had to put in requests for information with BCL Burton Copeland, the outside law firm.

From the start, Akers asked the company to turn over all internal reports and inquiries related to phone hacking, according to an executive familiar with the matter. That request covered some 2,500 e-mails reviewed in 2007 and sent to the law firm of Harbottle & Lewis.

Missing E-Mails

On March 24, Burton Copeland requested the documents from Harbottle. A week later, the file was delivered to News International’s office in Wapping. Brooks’s newly hired deputy, William Lewis, saw that it contained only about 100 e-mails. He and another new hire, Simon Greenberg, asked the IT department to reconstruct the rest of the package.

Meanwhile, it was clear that the 100 or so e-mails that News International had in hand were damaging. One was a note from Coulson, former editor of News of the World, to Goodman, complaining about the amount of money it would take to bribe a police official to get a copy of the phone numbers of Royal Family staff members.

After leaving News International in 2007 because of the Goodman case, Coulson was hired as a communications adviser to David Cameron, who became the U.K.’s prime minister in 2010.

The Threat

On April 14, the police arrested James Weatherup, an editor from News of the World. Burton Copeland removed some of Weatherup’s work-related possessions from News International before the police arrived, transferring them to its own offices.

Akers threatened to arrest Ian Burton, a principal at the law firm, and bring obstruction of justice charges, according to two people briefed on the matter, unless News International began to cooperate.

Brooks dispatched her two deputies, Lewis and Greenberg, to meet face-to-face with Akers and bear the brunt of her anger, said three people with knowledge of the matter.

Akers lectured the men about the importance of dealing directly with News International executives instead of a law firm. Lewis and Greenberg assured her that going forward, the company would cooperate completely.

A few days later, Brooks hosted a videoconference to update two colleagues at News Corp. headquarters in New York: Lon Jacobs, then the general counsel, and Joel Klein, chief executive of News Corp.’s education division, who was advising News Corp. chief executive Rupert Murdoch on the matter.

James Murdoch attended in London, along with Burton, Dan Tench, a lawyer from the firm Olswang, Lewis and Greenberg.

Scotland Yard

Klein and Jacobs had already heard about Akers’s anger over the removal of Weatherup’s possessions, according to two attendees who asked not to be identified. Brooks assured the men that Lewis and Greenberg had put things right with Scotland Yard and that Akers was no longer “mad” at News International.

After learning about the Harbottle file and the e-mail involving Coulson and payments to police officers, Jacobs asked whether Coulson would be arrested, according to two attendees. Brooks said that was likely.

Wouldn’t Coulson’s arrest be a problem for the company? Jacobs asked. Brooks dismissed his concern, saying Coulson’s arrest was much more likely to be a problem for David Cameron.

Coulson was arrested three months later.

Brooks herself came under fire in early July after the Guardian revealed that journalists working for her in 2002, when she was editor of News of the World, had sanctioned the hacking of a cell phone belonging to a 13-year-old schoolgirl who had been abducted and murdered.

New Cooperation

Brooks resigned from News International on July 15, a week after Coulson’s arrest. Two days later, she was arrested, questioned and released, pending charges.

Following the July 4 revelations about the murdered schoolgirl, News Corp. committed itself to full cooperation with the police. Murdoch named Klein, a former Justice Department prosecutor, to head up a management and standards committee (MSC), comprised of Lewis, Greenberg and Jeff Palker, general counsel for the company’s operations in Europe and Asia.

The committee is answerable to News Corp. headquarters in New York, and has no formal ties to the U.K. subsidiary. In her testimony last week, Scotland Yard’s Akers endorsed the committee’s efforts, as well as its independence.

“The fact that we are dealing with the MSC directly and not News International I think should make any contention that it isn’t independent without foundation,” Akers said.

News Corp.’s cooperation with Scotland Yard has come at a price. Journalists at The Sun have criticized the committee and complained that its willingness to turn over internal communications has jeopardized confidential sources.

The level of animosity towards the committee reached such a point last month that Rupert Murdoch came to London to express his commitment to the tabloid and its reporters. He spent much of February in London directing the launch of a new Sunday edition of The Sun, filling the News of the World void.






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News Corp.’s Board Should Oust James Murdoch, CtW Says

By Amy Thomson and Edmund Lee - Mar 19, 2012 8:31 PM GMT
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News Corp. (NWSA)’s independent directors should oust Deputy Chief Operating Officer James Murdoch from the media company’s board, said CtW Investment Group, an adviser to union-sponsored pension funds with more than $200 billion in assets.

Auction house Sotheby’s (BID) said March 16 that Murdoch will leave its board, following demands he resign over his role in a U.K. phone-hacking scandal. It was the third influential position he gave up in as many months, resigning from the board of GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) in January and as executive chairman of News Corp.’s U.K. publishing unit News International last month. Murdoch also faces calls to step down from News Corp.’s board and as chairman of British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc.

“The rest of the News Corp. board and British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSY) have not responded to the credibility concerns of having James continue to serve on their boards,” CtW Senior Analyst Michael Pryce-Jones said in a phone interview.

CtW advises investors who together own about 8.3 million Class A shares of News Corp., according to Pryce-Jones. Jack Horner, a spokesman for News Corp., declined to comment.

News Corp. shareholders in October lodged a protest vote against Rupert Murdoch and his sons, following an annual meeting at which investors called for governance changes and an end to voting practices that cement the family’s control of the company. James received the highest percentage of votes against his election to the board, at 35 percent.

In November, one-third of BSkyB’s independent shareholders voted against James Murdoch’s re-election as chairman. News Corp. owns 39 percent of BSkyB.

News Corp. rose less than 1 percent to $20.12 at the close in New York. The shares have gained 13 percent this year.

Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP competes with News Corp. units in providing financial news and information.

To contact the reporters on this story: Amy Thomson in London at athomson6@bloomberg.net; Edmund Lee in New York at elee310@bloomberg.net

http://www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/local/exclusive-rebekah-brooks-questioned-at-milton-keynes-police-station-1-3649959#

EXCLUSIVE: Rebekah Brooks questioned at Milton Keynes Police Station

Published on Wednesday 21 March 2012 15:22


FORMER Sun editor and News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks has been at Milton Keynes Police Station today.


But it is still not known whether she was summoned for further questioning, is being charged or is routinely answering her police bail.

Ms Brooks, who was arrested as part of the national phone hacking investigation on March 13, arrived in a black BMW at around 10am.

She has not yet been seen leaving.


> More to follow

Brooks Said to Be Quizzed on U.K. Defense Official Payment

By Amy Thomson - Mar 21, 2012 6:17 PM GMT
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Rebekah Brooks, the former Chief Executive Officer of News Corp. (NWSA)’s U.K. publishing unit, was questioned by police about payments made to a source at Britain’s Ministry of Defence, a person familiar with the investigation said.

London’s Metropolitan Police had questions related to information turned over by News Corp.’s Management and Standards Committee, formed to assist police investigations into claims of phone and computer hacking and bribery by the company’s reporters, said the person, who declined to be identified because the matter is private.

Brooks, who hasn’t been charged, reported to police today as a condition of her bail from a previous arrest. She has been questioned at least twice before, once after she was arrested on suspicion of phone hacking and again March 13 related to obstruction of police investigations. The 43-year-old stepped down from News Corp. last year after the New York-based company was forced to close the News of the World tabloid after its reporters were accused of illegally accessing the voice mails of a murdered teenager for stories.

At least 11 reporters at the company’s Sun tabloid have been arrested, though also not charged, as part of the same investigation. The scandal at the News of the World set off three police probes into hacking and bribery, a Parliamentary inquisition and a judge-led inquiry into media ethics that may lead to new rules for the British press.

Corruption Culture

Brooks’s lawyer Stephen Parkinson didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

In February, Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers testified to the independent press ethics panel that the Sun had a “culture” of corrupt payments to public officials and said defense officials and soldiers were paid for stories.

The Met said in a statement that they questioned a 43-year- old woman as part of a bribery investigation and declined to comment further.

Imo if Brooks is charged there's going tobe a lot of scared people out there connected to this, she isn't going to take this on the chin while certain persons escape......

Brooks will not be the first "new Mother" going to jail and certainly not the last.

Lillyofthevalley wrote:

Imo if Brooks is charged there's going tobe a lot of scared people out there connected to this, she isn't going to take this on the chin while certain persons escape......

Brooks will not be the first "new Mother" going to jail and certainly not the last.

Morning Lillyofthevalley, this is the bit that interests me:-" payments made to a source at Britain’s Ministry of Defence, a person familiar with the investigation said." This is serious stuff if true. Muirdoch gave Brooks a £1.7 million "severance" pay, a Car, and an Office, obviously to keep her mouth
shut but with her Husband possibly involved as well , she is not going to co-operate which is why she hasn,t been formally charged. Yes, Murdoch's
Empire is crumbling and now Ofcom are debating the suitability of James being in charge of bskyb.

Apparently Akers making a public statement about corruption was considered out of order by Lawyers acting for the Reporters from the Sun accused,
and could jeopardise the case.

Latest Disclosure

The latest disclosure in a series, made last week, involved a 2006 e-mail that detailed hacking at News of the World, the Sunday tabloid the company shut in response to the scandal. It showed Brooks, while editor of another News Corp. tabloid, The Sun, had been told by police that hacking victims were more widespread than the New York-based media company had admitted -- and included Brooks herself.

The e-mail, sent between two News of the World managers, suggests that from the beginning of the phone-hacking scandal, there was a conspiracy among senior executives to deceive the police and a separate, parliamentary probe into phone hacking.

The most significant of the revelations involves James Murdoch, the former News International executive chairman who, until last August, was widely considered to be the heir apparent to his father, Rupert Murdoch, as chief executive of News Corp.

E-Mail Deleted

In January of last year, eight days after police asked a News International tabloid to turn over any new evidence related to alleged voice-mail hacking, the company deleted a potentially incriminating e-mail from James Murdoch’s mailbox.

The younger Murdoch, currently deputy chief operating officer of News Corp., gave up his title as executive chairman of News International last week.

According to Linklaters LLP, the London law firm coordinating the company’s inquiry into alleged criminal behavior at News International, the deletion of James Murdoch’s e-mail files was part of a “stablisation and modernisation programme” put in motion by the company’s information technology department in January of last year.

The Murdoch e-mail was deleted 11 days before London police opened a new investigation into phone hacking at News International, a coincidence reported by The New York Times.

News International had asked HCL Technologies, a database management firm, about the possibility of “truncating a database” during the same month. HCL said in a letter to Parliament that it wasn’t able to fulfill the request.

The Plan

News International proceeded with its e-mail “stabilisation” plan until late January, when the police opened Operation Weeting, its current probe into phone hacking. At that point, the company halted its purge, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Earlier this year, a U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, reported that News International had sent out a directive on Jan. 12, 2011 -- three days before the deletion -- asking that employees retain their e-mails. News International spokeswoman Daisy Dunlop declined to comment on the Guardian report.

A hard copy of the deleted e-mail was subsequently discovered in the files of former News of the World editor Colin Myler. The note, from 2008, relayed to James Murdoch a lawyer’s warning that a union official suing the company was eager for the opportunity to demonstrate that phone-hacking was “rife” at News of the World, and not limited to a single “rogue” reporter, which had been the company’s official position.

Not Aware

Murdoch told Parliament on two occasions last year that he had never been made aware that phone-hacking was widespread at News of the World while he was chief executive of News International from 2007 to 2009.

After the note was discovered in December, Murdoch wrote to Parliament, saying he was confident he didn’t review the full e- mail at the time, given his quick response to it and the likelihood that he had received the message on his BlackBerry.

Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with News Corp. units in providing financial news and information.

Parliament may issue a report as early as this month on its probe into phone-hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. tabloids. Its last report on the topic, from 2010, expressed exasperation at what lawmakers described as “collective amnesia” on the part of News International’s top management.

Based on disclosures since the last report, the forthcoming one will probably be even more critical of James Murdoch, Brooks and other senior News International executives who testified last year before the House of Commons’ select committee on culture, media and sport.

Other Probes

In addition to the parliamentary inquiry, News International is the subject of three separate criminal probes involving phone hacking, bribery of police officers and computer hacking. News International is also in the process of settling civil cases brought by celebrities and other public figures who claim their voice-mail accounts were regularly hacked.

Judge Vos admonished the company in open court in January over what he described as an intentional effort to delete e- mails pertaining to phone hacking.

In addition to his accusations about destruction of evidence, he ordered several laptops that had escaped scrutiny to be examined. The judge said they might contain clues as to why so many of the company’s e-mails were deleted as victim lawsuits against News International piled up.

The company is also center stage in the Leveson Inquiry, a London tribunal led by Judge Brian Leveson. He is charged with looking into the ethics of the media in the U.K.

Read Aloud

It was at this inquiry on Feb. 27 that the e-mail about Brooks’ knowledge of phone hacking in 2006 was read aloud. It was sent in September of that year by Tom Crone, an in-house lawyer, to Andy Coulson, who was at that time editor of News of the World.

Crone wrote the note a month after the arrest of Clive Goodman, the Royal Family reporter whose arrest for hacking kicked off the scandal. At the time, the police were trying, unsuccessfully, to get News International to give them access to Goodman’s files.

The reporter and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who did contract work for News of the World, were charged with the illegal interception of voice mails belonging to members of the Royal Family and their staff.

The e-mail begins: “Here’s [what] Rebekah told me about info relayed to her by cops.”

Police Plan

According to the e-mail, a police representative had informed Brooks that phone-hacking victims extended beyond members of the Royal Family, which was the cause of the original investigation. The police were intent on bringing the case to trial, “to demonstrate the scale” of the phone-hacking effort.

Prosecutors never got the opportunity to present “the full case” because the two men charged, Goodman and Mulcaire, pleaded guilty.

In December, an outside lawyer who reviewed a cache of e- mails in 2007 between Goodman and five editors, including Coulson, expressed surprise at the “active involvement” displayed by News of the World editors in Goodman’s case.

The lawyer, Lawrence Abramson, who reviewed the e-mails when he was at the Harbottle & Lewis LLP law firm, testified at the Leveson inquiry that Goodman’s editors were “trying to influence the way the prosecution was being conducted -- or the way the defense was being conducted.”

“And there is one e-mail that’s been redacted that I thought would not reflect well on…” Abramson continued, before being stopped because his testimony was straying into areas under criminal investigation.

Coulson Blamed

The emergence of evidence suggesting Brooks’ awareness of the scope of phone-hacking comes at a time when she is under increased scrutiny.

Until last summer, blame for phone hacking had attached to Coulson, her successor at News of the World. In 2003, Brooks became editor of The Sun, which kept her clear of suspicion in phone hacking issues that arose in 2005 and 2006.

Her position has changed in recent months, as the police have arrested 10 current and former journalists from The Sun in connection with the widespread payment of police officers and other public officials for information.

Cheryl Carter, Brooks’ longtime personal assistant, was arrested on Jan. 6, on suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

At the Leveson inquiry last week, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Akers testified that Scotland Yard had uncovered a “network of corrupt officials” who had received payments from journalists at The Sun.

Culture of Bribes

“There also appears to have been a culture at the Sun of illegal payments, and systems have been created to facilitate those payments, whilst hiding the identity of the officials receiving the money,” Akers added.

David Wilson, Brooks’s spokesman, declined to comment on the police investigation.

A year ago, Brooks was in charge of the relationship between News International and Scotland Yard. Beginning in January 2011, when Operation Weeting was started, she wouldn’t let Akers or her detectives deal directly with executives at News International, according to Akers’ testimony before Parliament last summer. Scotland Yard had to put in requests for information with BCL Burton Copeland, the outside law firm.

From the start, Akers asked the company to turn over all internal reports and inquiries related to phone hacking, according to an executive familiar with the matter. That request covered some 2,500 e-mails reviewed in 2007 and sent to the law firm of Harbottle & Lewis.

Missing E-Mails

On March 24, Burton Copeland requested the documents from Harbottle. A week later, the file was delivered to News International’s office in Wapping. Brooks’s newly hired deputy, William Lewis, saw that it contained only about 100 e-mails. He and another new hire, Simon Greenberg, asked the IT department to reconstruct the rest of the package.

Meanwhile, it was clear that the 100 or so e-mails that News International had in hand were damaging. One was a note from Coulson, former editor of News of the World, to Goodman, complaining about the amount of money it would take to bribe a police official to get a copy of the phone numbers of Royal Family staff members.

After leaving News International in 2007 because of the Goodman case, Coulson was hired as a communications adviser to David Cameron, who became the U.K.’s prime minister in 2010.

The Threat

On April 14, the police arrested James Weatherup, an editor from News of the World. Burton Copeland removed some of Weatherup’s work-related possessions from News International before the police arrived, transferring them to its own offices.

Akers threatened to arrest Ian Burton, a principal at the law firm, and bring obstruction of justice charges, according to two people briefed on the matter, unless News International began to cooperate.

Brooks dispatched her two deputies, Lewis and Greenberg, to meet face-to-face with Akers and bear the brunt of her anger, said three people with knowledge of the matter.

Akers lectured the men about the importance of dealing directly with News International executives instead of a law firm. Lewis and Greenberg assured her that going forward, the company would cooperate completely.

A few days later, Brooks hosted a videoconference to update two colleagues at News Corp. headquarters in New York: Lon Jacobs, then the general counsel, and Joel Klein, chief executive of News Corp.’s education division, who was advising News Corp. chief executive Rupert Murdoch on the matter.

James Murdoch attended in London, along with Burton, Dan Tench, a lawyer from the firm Olswang, Lewis and Greenberg.

Scotland Yard

Klein and Jacobs had already heard about Akers’s anger over the removal of Weatherup’s possessions, according to two attendees who asked not to be identified. Brooks assured the men that Lewis and Greenberg had put things right with Scotland Yard and that Akers was no longer “mad” at News International.

After learning about the Harbottle file and the e-mail involving Coulson and payments to police officers, Jacobs asked whether Coulson would be arrested, according to two attendees. Brooks said that was likely.

Wouldn’t Coulson’s arrest be a problem for the company? Jacobs asked. Brooks dismissed his concern, saying Coulson’s arrest was much more likely to be a problem for David Cameron.

Coulson was arrested three months later.

Brooks herself came under fire in early July after the Guardian revealed that journalists working for her in 2002, when she was editor of News of the World, had sanctioned the hacking of a cell phone belonging to a 13-year-old schoolgirl who had been abducted and murdered.

New Cooperation

Brooks resigned from News International on July 15, a week after Coulson’s arrest. Two days later, she was arrested, questioned and released, pending charges.

Following the July 4 revelations about the murdered schoolgirl, News Corp. committed itself to full cooperation with the police. Murdoch named Klein, a former Justice Department prosecutor, to head up a management and standards committee (MSC), comprised of Lewis, Greenberg and Jeff Palker, general counsel for the company’s operations in Europe and Asia.

The committee is answerable to News Corp. headquarters in New York, and has no formal ties to the U.K. subsidiary. In her testimony last week, Scotland Yard’s Akers endorsed the committee’s efforts, as well as its independence.

“The fact that we are dealing with the MSC directly and not News International I think should make any contention that it isn’t independent without foundation,” Akers said.

News Corp.’s cooperation with Scotland Yard has come at a price. Journalists at The Sun have criticized the committee and complained that its willingness to turn over internal communications has jeopardized confidential sources.

The level of animosity towards the committee reached such a point last month that Rupert Murdoch came to London to express his commitment to the tabloid and its reporters. He spent much of February in London directing the launch of a new Sunday edition of The Sun, filling the News of the World void.

Carey is expected to take over from Rupert Murdoch as Chairman of Newscorp.




News Corp. Executives Weighed Spinoff of Newspaper Publishing, Carey Says

By Edmund Lee - Feb 28, 2012 9:59 PM GMT
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..
News Corp. (NWSA), facing inquiries by authorities over hacking and bribery at its U.K. newspapers, has discussed spinning off its publishing business, according to Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey.

Carey had a number of talks with News Corp. executives about selling or separating the publishing unit from the company, he said today at the Deutsche Bank (DBK) media conference in Palm Beach, Florida.

“There certainly is an awareness” that New York-based News Corp. would trade at higher multiples if it didn’t own newspapers, Carey said in response to a question.

News Corp., based in New York, owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post in the U.S., as well as the Times, Sun, and just-introduced Sun on Sunday in the U.K. The company derives more than 70 percent of its operating income from its television businesses that includes Fox Broadcast and the FX cable channel. Publishing accounts for less than a fifth of annual operating income and is “significantly down year-on-year on profitability,” according to Carey.

News Corp. rose 1.6 percent to $19.81 at the close in New York. The shares have gained 11 percent this year.

For the moment, the company is focusing on increasing profit margins at the publishing businesses, Carey said. He left open the possibility the board could consider a spin off.

“As a board, we will and have and will continue to discuss everything that we think that makes sense,” Carey said.

Sun on Sunday

Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch, who paid $5.2 billion for Wall Street Journal owner Dow Jones & Co. (DJ) in 2007, started the Sunday edition of the Sun tabloid this past weekend. It sold 3.26 million copies in its debut, topping the circulation of its News of the World predecessor that was shut down last year following an outcry over reporters who had hacked into mobile phones.

At least three separate inquiries into the practices of News Corp.’s U.K. journalists have revealed possible bribery of public officials and more than 800 potential victims of hacking. Ten Sun journalists have been arrested in the police investigation into corrupt payments to police officers and other public officials. The hacking scandal has cost News Corp. $195 million since July, according to the company.

Tony Blair’s Wife Cherie Sues News Corp., Convicted Phone-Hacker Mulcaire

By Erik Larson and Robert Hutton - Feb 23, 2012 1:01 AM GMT
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..
Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s wife Cherie sued News Corp. (NWSA) and a former private investigator for its now-defunct News of the World tabloid for hacking into her phone.

The lawsuit, filed Feb. 21 against the company’s U.K. unit and Glenn Mulcaire, comes as News Corp. prepares for the first civil trial over the scandal, scheduled to start next week in London. The company has already settled phone-hacking claims by Blair’s former press chief, Alastair Campbell, and former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch shuttered the News of the World in July in a bid to contain public anger after it was revealed the tabloid hacked into the voice mails of a murdered schoolgirl. While most of the current lawsuits have settled, the company may face claims by more than 800 possible victims identified by police.

“If it is true that a former prime minister’s family have been targeted by Rupert Murdoch’s hackers, then it is clearly a significant moment in the scandal,” Tom Watson, a Labour Party lawmaker who is on a parliamentary committee investigating the scandal, said in an e-mail.

A message left with the press office of News Corp.’s U.K. unit, News International, wasn’t immediately returned. Mulcaire’s lawyer, Sarah Webb, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment. Mulcaire was jailed in 2007 for hacking phones of members of Britain’s royal family.

‘Unlawful Interception’

“We have issued a claim on behalf of Cherie Blair in relation to the unlawful interception of her voice mails,” her lawyer, Graham Atkins of Atkins Thomson Solicitors in London, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. “I will not be commenting any further at this time.” Full details of the suit aren’t yet available.

Tony Blair, who led Labour to three successive general- election victories starting in 1997, regularly consulted with Murdoch during his decade in office. Vogue magazine reported last year that in 2010 he’d become godfather to Murdoch’s daughter Grace. His office didn’t respond to an e-mail requesting confirmation.

Cherie Blair, 57, was the subject of media attention throughout her husband’s premiership. She continued her career as a human-rights lawyer, and spoke of the difficulty of juggling life as a working mother of young children and the wife of the prime minister. Her father, Tony Booth, a prominent actor who supported Labour, was critical of many of his son-in-law’s policies.

‘Rough Ride’

“For a long time she felt she had a very rough ride from the press,” John Rentoul, Blair’s biographer, said in a telephone interview. “We saw that when she left Downing Street” on the day Blair left office in 2007.

“I don’t think we’ll miss you,” she told the assembled press as the Blairs quit the prime-ministerial residence in central London for the last time.

Cherie Blair also created her own problems. In 2006 she was overheard being rude about Gordon Brown, as he made a speech praising her husband, after Blair had been forced by followers of Brown to set a date for the then chancellor of the exchequer to succeed him as premier.

In 2000, she became the first wife of a serving prime minister in more than a century to give birth. Giving evidence to the judicial inquiry into media ethics last year, Blair’s spokesman, Alastair Campbell, suggested papers might have got wind of her pregnancy by phone hacking.

“With Cherie Blair in particular, she was turning up at places and the press was finding out about it,” Campbell said. He pointed to Associated Newspapers Ltd.’s Mail newspapers and Trinity Mirror Plc’s Mirror as having obtained stories that left him and his colleagues “scratching our heads saying, ‘How the hell did that get out?”’

‘Criminal Wrongdoing’

“I hope Cherie Blair will also establish whether she was a target for covert surveillance and computer hacking,” Watson said. “And I hope Tony Blair comes forward to condemn Rupert Murdoch’s failure to deal with the criminal wrongdoing that went on over many years at News Corp. U.K.”

News Corp. paid 130,000 pounds last month ($204,000) to settle hacking claims by the actor Jude Law and 50,000 pounds to settle a complaint from his ex-wife, Sadie Frost.

A test trial involving singer Charlotte Church to determine damages in future cases is scheduled to start next week in London. Church may settle the suit before then, the Financial Times reported.

News Corp. has agreed to pay out $15.6 million to phone- hacking victims, settling at least 54 lawsuits out of 60 that were filed by October.
[b]

THERE WAS A PANORAMA PROGRAMME AT 8.30 BBC1 ABOUT MURDOCH.
IT WAS SAYING SKY TV USED HACKERS TO HACK INTO TV PAY CARDS(THAT IS CERTAINLY THE INFERENCE).
THIS PROBLEM LED TO ITV DIGITAL CLOSING SHOP.

Badboy wrote:THERE WAS A PANORAMA PROGRAMME AT 8.30 BBC1 ABOUT MURDOCH.
IT WAS SAYING SKY TV USED HACKERS TO HACK INTO TV PAY CARDS(THAT IS CERTAINLY THE INFERENCE).
THIS PROBLEM LED TO ITV DIGITAL CLOSING SHOP.

I saw that Badboy, and I would advise anybody who is at all interested in Murdoch's doings, to watch this program on iPlayer.

Iris wrote:

Badboy wrote:THERE WAS A PANORAMA PROGRAMME AT 8.30 BBC1 ABOUT MURDOCH.
IT WAS SAYING SKY TV USED HACKERS TO HACK INTO TV PAY CARDS(THAT IS CERTAINLY THE INFERENCE).
THIS PROBLEM LED TO ITV DIGITAL CLOSING SHOP.

I saw that Badboy, and I would advise anybody who is at all interested in Murdoch's doings, to watch this program on iPlayer.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THINGS TO DO WITH MURDOCH COULDN'T GET ANY WORSE,IT GETS WORSE.
THE MIND BOGGLES HOW IT COULD GET WORSE THAN IT IS.

THE GUARDIAN HAS AN ARTICLE IN WHICH MURDOCH DENIES USING HACKERS.(SEEN THIS ON SKY NEWS)

27 March 2012 Last updated at 11:25



A News Corporation subsidiary company used a computer hacker to sabotage Sky TV's biggest rival, BBC Panorama has reported.

NDS is accused of leaking information from ITV Digital which could be used to create counterfeit smart cards, giving people free access to paid for TV.

The Carlton and Granada owned company folded in 2002, leaving Sky TV as the UK's only paid-for network.

An NDS statement denied the claims calling them "simply not true".

ITV Digital was first launched as On Digital and was set up as a rival to News Corporation's Sky TV in 1998.

But the widespread availability of secret codes to reproduce the cards needed to access the service meant ITV Digital's services could be accessed for free by pirates.

Hacking intelligence

The latest claims have been made by Lee Gibling - who set up a website in the late 90s known as The House of Ill-Compute, or Thoic.

Mr Gibling told the BBC he was paid to publish stolen information. His contact at NDS was Ray Adams, who at the time was head of UK security for the firm - which manufactures smartcards for all News Corporations' pay-TV companies across the world.

However, the company has denied Mr Gibling's claims and said Thoic was only used to gather intelligence on hackers.

"It is simply not true that NDS used the Thoic website to sabotage the commercial interests of ONDigital/ITV digital or indeed any rival," the NDS statement said.

"As part of the fight against pay-TV piracy, all companies in the conditional access industry - and many law enforcement agencies - come to posses codes that could enable hackers to access services for free.

"It is wrong to claim NDS has ever been in possession of any codes for the purpose of promoting hacking or piracy."

'Killer blow'

ITV Digital's former chief technical officer, Simon Dore, told the programme that piracy was "the killer blow for the business, there is no question".

"The business had its issues aside from the piracy... but those issues I believe would have been solvable by careful and good management. The real killer, the hole beneath the water line, was the piracy. We couldn't recover from that."

Mr Gibling told Panorama that codes on the Thoic site originated from NDS.

Continue reading the main story
Panorama: Find out more

Vivian White presents Panorama: Murdoch's TV Pirates
BBC One, Monday, 26 March at 20:30 BST
Then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer

"They delivered the actual software to be able to do this, with prior instructions that it should go to the widest possible community," he said.

Two former senior policemen ran the NDS UK security unit. Mr Adams had been head of criminal intelligence at the Metropolitan Police and Len Withall, who had been a chief inspector in the Surrey force.

Both men were secretly filmed by Panorama.

Mr Adams claimed he "would have arrested" Mr Gibling if he had known ITV Digital's code had been published on Thoic and denied having the codes himself.

But internal NDS documents, obtained by Panorama, show a hacked code was passed to Mr Withall and Mr Adams from a technology expert inside the company.

'Their baby'

Mr Gibling said NDS paid for Thoic's servers and was across all of its hacking and TV piracy.

"Everything that was in the closed area of Thoic was totally accessed by any of the NDS representatives," he said.

He added that although Thoic was in his name, in reality the website belonged to NDS.

There is no evidence that James Murdoch knew about the events reported by Panorama
"It was NDS. It was their baby and it started to become more their baby as they fashioned it to their own design."

Once ITV Digital's codes were published on Thoic, Mr Gibling said his site was then used to defeat the electronic countermeasures that the company used to try to stop the piracy.

He added that new codes, created by ITV Digital, were sent out to other piracy websites.

"We wanted people to be able to update these cards themselves, we didn't want them buying a single card and then finding they couldn't get channels. We wanted them to stay and keep with On Digital, flogging it until it broke."

NDS's UK security unit was 50% funded by Sky. But the satellite broadcaster, chaired by James Murdoch, told the programme it had no involvement in how the unit was run and was not aware of Thoic.

Mr Murdoch was a non-executive director of NDS at the time although there is no evidence that he knew about the events reported by Panorama.

'Fit and proper'

Ofcom, the television regulator, is currently examining whether Mr Murdoch and News Corporation are "fit and proper" persons to be in control of BSkyB, the company that runs Sky TV. News Corporation currently owns 39% of BSkyB.

Tom Watson MP, a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee that has been examining the phone-hacking scandal, has called for Ofcom to examine these new allegations in their assessment.

"Clearly allegations of TV hacking are far more serious than phone hacking," he said. "It seems inconceivable that they (Ofcom) would not want to look at these new allegations. Ofcom are now applying the fit and proper person test to Rupert and James Murdoch. It also seems inconceivable to me that if these allegations are true that Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch will pass that test."

NDS declined to be interviewed for the programme.

Panorama: Murdoch's TV Pirates, BBC One, Monday, 26 March at 20:30 BST and then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.
More on This Story
Related

Ofcom, the television regulator, is currently examining whether Mr Murdoch and News Corporation are "fit and proper" persons to be in control of BSkyB, the company that runs Sky TV. News Corporation currently owns 39% of BSkyB."

Is there no part of the Murdoch Empire that has not been involved in dirty deeds.? I hope Ofcom revokes their Licence for BskyB, the most successful of their dwindling empire. Cameron must be sqirming knowing how involved he has been with the Murdochs.

.

The newspaper, The Australian Financial Review, which is owned by one of Mr. Murdoch’s main Australian rivals, Fairfax Media, published more than 14,000 internal e-mails from a former News Corporation subsidiary along with the results of what it said was a four-year-long investigation into whether that company, NDS Group, encouraged the mass pirating of rival satellite television networks.

“These are serious allegations, and any allegations of criminal activity should be referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) for investigation,” Suzie Brady, a spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, said in an e-mail exchange.

A spokeswoman for the police said that she could not immediately confirm whether a criminal investigation had been opened over the allegations in the report, which centers largely on the battle for dominance over Australia’s burgeoning pay TV market in the late 1990s.

The report came a day after a BBC documentary made similar claims against NDS Group in Britain, saying that it had paid a consultant to “crack” and publish on a pirate Web site the smart-card codes of a pay service that was started by ITV, the country’s free-to-air broadcaster. News Corporation has denied the claims made in the BBC program, Panorama.

The new e-mails, which the newspaper said had come from the hard drive of Ray Adams, a former commander in the Metropolitan Police in London who served as head of operational security for NDS Group in Europe from 1996 to 2002, appear to show that a secret unit within the company called “Operational Security” promoted a wave of high-tech piracy that damaged the News Corporation rivals Austar and Optus at a time when the company was positioning itself to be the dominant player in the Australian pay TV industry.

The e-mails also support the claims made in the BBC program, the report says.

The report says that the e-mails provide evidence that the unit, which is headed by Reuven Hasak, a former deputy director of Israel’s domestic secret service, Shin Bet, encouraged and facilitated piracy by hackers of companies for whom NDS provided pay TV smart cards, which allow subscribers to descramble encoded satellite transmissions.

The report maintains that the piracy cost the Australian companies as much as $52 million a year and helped to severely damage the television provider Austar, which Foxtel is now in the process of acquiring for nearly $2 billion in a deal that would cement the company’s hold over the country’s pay TV market. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is reviewing that deal.

News Corporation, which has been roiled by accusations of phone hacking at its British newspapers, including the now-defunct News of the World, issued a strong statement of support for NDS after the report was published.

“News Corporation is proud to have worked with NDS, whose industry-leading technology has transformed TV viewing for millions of people across the world, and to have supported them in their aggressive fight against piracy and copyright infringement,” the statement said.
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Thanks AnnaEsse.....there is no way the Murdoch Family can retain 70% of the shares with all this coming to light. Nor will James Murdoch be allowed
after the ofcom investigation to continue to run BskyB. My guess is the U.S. clause relating to "good governance" for Companies operating outside the
U.S. is proving to be the most corrupt Murdoch Empire and he will be forced to sell some of the Assets. Also , although Newscorp have been doing their
own investigation and handing over to Scotland Yard and Leveson all their findings.....just how much does the Board know of Murdochs corrupt business
methods.?

Cameron is on more than friendly terms with Murdoch, Tony Blair is Godfather to one of Murdochs Grandchildren , it all stinks to high Heaven.

Have a look at this >> http://wish.co.uk/number-10/

Brilliant find Iris.