Lawyer says British phone hacking scandal could spread to U.S.

LONDON -- The British phone hacking scandal that resulted in scores of arrests and the July closing of the popular tabloid News of the World could spread to the United States, a media lawyer who represents several victims said Thursday.

Attorney Mark Lewis said inquiries by British police into illegal phone interceptions by the tabloid were widening and he would be seeking documentation in the U.S. on behalf of three of his clients, who he said were victims of illegal phone interceptions.

The tabloid is owned by News International, the British branch of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

“The cases I am pursuing were by the News of the World against people who were in the U.S. at the time they were hacked or were U.S. citizens,” he said in a email to The Times sent while he was en route to the airport. 

“The scandal is not just confined to the United Kingdom or U.K. companies,” he told the BBC, “but this goes to the heartland of News Corp. and we will be looking at the involvement of the parent company and in terms of claims there and that is something that I think will be taken more seriously by investors and shareholders in News Corp.”

Scotland Yard arrests six people in phone-hacking scandal

REPORTING FROM LONDON -- Police investigating Britain’s phone-hacking scandal swooped down on a number of homes in an early-morning raid and arrested six people Tuesday, including a woman identified in media reports as Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers.

Scotland Yard said all six suspects, five men and one woman, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, suggesting that their probe into phone hacking has broadened to include an investigation into a possible cover-up by employees and executives at Murdoch-owned News International.

Brooks, 43, headed the company before resigning in disgrace in July after it emerged that one of its publications, the weekly News of the World, had illegally accessed the voicemail messages on the cellphone of a kidnapped teenager who was later found slain in 2002. Brooks was the tabloid’s editor at the time but has denied any knowledge of what happened.

To contain the fallout, Murdoch summarily shut down the News of the World. Brooks, a close Murdoch confidant and a personal friend of Prime Minister David Cameron, was arrested on suspicion of phone hacking a few days later but released on bail.

Authorities now suspect that the News of the World illegally tapped into the cellphones of hundreds of people in its ravenous hunger for scoops. Murdoch’s media empire has already shelled out millions  to settle lawsuits brought against it by hacking victims whose ranks include high-profile politicians, movie stars and professional athletes.

In addition, the News of the World – just one of a raft of aggressive, sensation-seeking and often politically powerful tabloids in this country – is believed to have pried into the phones of families of fallen soldiers and murder victims, and hired private detectives to conduct surveillance on the paper’s perceived enemies.

Allegations of shady newsgathering practices have also spread to the News of the World’s sister tabloid, the Sun, Britain’s best-selling daily paper.

Critics allege that executives at News International have tried to thwart investigators by lying and destroying documents and company e-mails. Murdoch insists that his giant News Corp. is fully cooperating with the police.

Tuesday’s arrests took place in London and neighboring counties. Officers descended on five residences and one business between 5 and 7 a.m. and are searching various locations as part of their investigation.

One of the five men arrested has been identified in the British media as Brooks’ husband, Charlie, a racehorse trainer.

Last July, a security guard found a laptop computer and various documents that had been stuffed into a garbage bag and tossed into a trash can at the London apartment building where the Brookses maintained a flat. The guard turned the items over to police. Charlie Brooks subsequently tried to reclaim them, saying they had been tossed out mistakenly as the result of a mixup with an associate.

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Photo: Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International, and her husband, Charlie Brooks, shown in 2011. Credit: Alan Crowhurst / Getty Images.

Britain's press watchdog, criticized as toothless, is disbanding

REPORTING FROM LONDON -- Britain's press watchdog organization is being disbanded, a victim of the scandal over tabloid phone-hacking tactics that the group failed to spot or prevent.

Criticism has rained down on the Press Complaints Commission since the hacking scandal broke open last summer with the revelation that the sensation-seeking News of the World had illegally tapped into voice mails left on the phone of a kidnapped 13-year-old girl. Many observers dismissed the commission, which is funded by the media industry, as a toothless body that had shown itself incapable of doing its job of upholding ethical journalism.

On Thursday, the organization's spokesman, Jonathan Collett, said the PCC's directors unanimously agreed Wednesday that the commission should begin shutting down and transferring its responsibilities to an interim body. The commission had already been slated for a phase-out sometime in the near future, but directors decided to accelerate that process.

Set up about two decades ago, the PCC was supposed to be an exercise in self-regulation by Britain's media, which operate in one of the most fiercely competitive news environments in the world. Its mandate was to investigate alleged abuses by the media and to demand redress where necessary, though it did not have the power to levy monetary fines. The aim of successful self-regulation was to keep government interference in the media at bay.

The PCC often rebuked newspapers and tabloids for what it deemed to be intrusive or dishonest news-gathering practices, but it lacked the ability to enforce its decisions. Its weak and hesitant response to the swelling tide of allegations of phone hacking discredited it in the eyes of many.

Authorities now say that the cellphones of hundreds of celebrities, politicians, athletes and even families of crime victims were systematically hacked by scoop-hungry tabloids, in particular the News of the World, which media titan Rupert Murdoch summarily closed down in July at the height of public outrage. Murdoch and his son James have since appeared before British lawmakers to explain how hacking became endemic at the now-defunct tabloid.

An independent judge-led investigation into press practices and the media's relationship with politicians and police is underway. The inquiry is expected eventually to recommend a replacement for the Press Complaints Commission.

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Photo: Former chairwoman of the Press Complaints Commission, Baroness Buscombe, arrives to give evidence at an inquiry at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Feb. 7. The inquiry is looking into the culture, practice and ethics of the British press. Credit: Ben Stansall / AFP/Getty Images

 

Murdoch tabloids paid police for celebrity information, official says

REPORTING FROM LONDON -– Payments to police and public officials in return for information on celebrities and names in the public domain for stories dealing with little more than "salacious gossip" were common practice at News Corp.-owned tabloids, a British police official said Monday.

Deputy Chief Commissioner Sue Akers made the statement in an ongoing civil inquiry into media practices and ethics triggered by the phone-hacking scandal that broke last summer when it was revealed that the News of the World, owned by News Corp., had hacked into the cellphone of teenage rape and murder victim Milly Dowler.

News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch closed the popular tabloid following a public outcry.

Set in motion by Prime Minister David Cameron, the inquiry began a new phase Monday, looking at relations between the media and public officials. So far, it has revealed a widespread culture of phone hacking and surveillance of newsworthy people by journalists that had been all but ignored by police over the last decade.

Monday's evidence revealed long-standing illegal payments to police and public officials by journalists working for two of Murdoch's tabloids, the News of the World and the Sun.

Speaking after a recent slew of arrests of public officials and Sun journalists in connection with suspected bribery, Akers, head of one of several police inquiries going through about 300 million confiscated emails for information on illegal media practices and relations between journalists and officials, said, "The current assessment is that there was a network of corrupted officials. ... There appears to have been a culture at the Sun of illegal payments and systems created to facilitate those payments."

One journalist had drawn a total of over 150,000 pounds -– about $220,000 -- over recent years for payments to public officials, she said.

The revelations come a day after Murdoch launched his new Sun on Sunday tabloid. In a statement after Akers presented her evidence, he vowed "to get to the bottom of prior wrongdoings. ... The practices Sue Akers described ... are ones of the past, and no longer exist at The Sun. We have already emerged a stronger company."

News International, the British arm of News Corp., has agreed to pay millions of dollars in damages after successful legal claims by phone-hacking victims, including actors Jude Law and Sienna Miller. At the same time, Murdoch and son James, chairman of News International, have denied knowledge that phone hacking was conducted by more than one or two rogue journalists at the News of the World.

On Monday, Charlotte Church, the singer whose audiences have included Pope John Paul II and former President  Clinton, was awarded over $950,000 in damages from News Corp. in connection with illegal phone taps and surveillance by tabloid journalists.

High Court Judge Geoffrey Vos told a hearing that Church and her parents had been pursued by reporters and photographers since 2002, when the singer was 16. Illegal phone-hacking and constant surveillance resulted in 33 articles on the singer and her family in the now-defunct News of the World, he said.

In an angry statement after the hearing, the 26-year-old singer, who had been present in court, told a crowd of reporters that she was "sickened and disgusted" by what she had learned about the practices of those "who pursued me and my family just to make money for a multinational news corporation." 

Her parents had "been harassed," she said, and her mother "bullied into revealing her own private medical condition."

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Photo: British singer Charlotte Church reads a statement to the media outside a central London court on Monday following the settlement of her legal action against the publishers of now-defunct newspaper News of the World over allegations of phone hacking.  Credit: Carl Court / AFP/Getty Images

Rupert Murdoch flies to London to confront angry tabloid staff

REPORTING FROM LONDON -- News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch flew into London on Thursday night to confront a hostile news staff on his favorite tabloid The Sun on Friday morning.

Police inquiries into illegal phone hacking led to the arrest of 10 of the Sun’s staff in recent weeks on allegations of corruption and bribing police officials, and reports Friday spoke of a crisis meeting and civil war in the newsroom which could define the future of the popular tabloid.

All 10 were released on bail but their arrests have generated ill feelings toward Murdoch and his News Corp. Management and Standards committee set up by him to collaborate with police and which provided names and information prompting the arrests and house searches of former and present staff.

On Saturday, five journalists, including senior editors and journalists, were questioned by police and their houses were searched.  Police have also conducted searches of the east London offices of News International, the British arm of the Murdoch News Corp. media empire and publisher of The Sun and sister papers The Times and Sunday Times.

They were the latest arrests in police investigations after Murdoch's decision in July to close his other popular tabloid, the News of the World, after revelations that the paper had illegally tapped the phone of teenage murder victim Milly Dowler.

Since then, civil and police inquiries have mushroomed, triggering around 30 arrests of public officials, media executives and journalists, the resignation of senior police officers and a radical review of ethics and practices by British journalists searching for scoops on celebrities and crime victims.

Furious at what they see as betrayal by their owner, who was responsible for handing over millions of emails and other documentation revealing journalists’ confidential sources, Sun staff hit back via Associate Editor Trevor Kavanagh bitterly talking a few days ago of a "witch hunt" and claiming journalists doing their job were “treated like members of an organized crime gang.”

As Murdoch met with staff at the headquarters of News International, speculation was rife as to the Sun’s future. Murdoch faces fierce questioning within News Corp. as to how much he and his son James, News International's chief executive, really knew about the widespread use of phone hacking and other unethical practices by their British staff despite their assertions that they were aware of only one rogue reporter. 

Despite his well-reported deep-seated love for his British tabloid, many see him ready to sacrifice the Sun in the interests of his survival at News Corp.

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Phone-hacking arrests bring furious response from a Sun editor

REPORTING FROM LONDON -- Britain's bestselling tabloid launched a blistering attack on the police Monday for arresting five of its journalists over the weekend in an investigation into media corruption and unethical practices in the wake of the country's phone-hacking scandal.

Scotland Yard is treating reporters at Rupert Murdoch's The Sun "like members of an organized crime gang," complained Trevor Kavanagh, the paper's associate editor. He lashed out at what he called a police "witch hunt," warned that Britain was falling behind former Soviet bloc countries in terms of press freedom and criticized police raids on journalists' homes during which officers sifted through "intimate possessions, love letters and entirely private documents."

Never mind that the Sun's sister publication, the News of the World, was closed down last summer over allegations of illegal hacking of cellphones on an industrial scale. Or that the Sun prides itself on salacious stories peering into the intimate, private love lives (and documents, when it can get them) of movie stars, politicians and athletes.

Kavanagh said the multiple investigations spawned by the hacking scandal had become disproportionate and sucked police resources away from more important matters such as stopping terrorism.

British police arrest eight tied to phone-hacking scandal

REPORTING FROM LONDON --  Police arrested eight people in London and southern England on Saturday morning in their investigation of corruption connected to the ongoing phone-hacking scandal.

Scotland Yard did not identify those who were arrested, but said they were detained as part of the "investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police and public officials. ...in conjunction with the inquiry into the phone-hacking of voicemail boxes.”

A statement from News Corp. in New York confirmed that five of those arrested were journalists working for the popular tabloid the Sun, which is owned by News International, the British branch of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

The British Broadcasting Corp. identified the five as picture editor John Edwards, senior reporter John Kay, chief foreign correspondent Nick Parker, reporter John Sturgis and associate editor Geoff Webster.

Scotland Yard said the others arrested were members of the police and armed forces, and a Defense Ministry employee.

Five other former and current Sun journalists and one police officer were arrested last month. They since have been released on bail.

As with the arrests last month, police said they had acted on information provided by News Corp. The company pledged in a statement that "unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past will not be repeated." The editor of the Sun, Dominic Mohan, said in a statement that he was shocked by the arrests but determined to lead the paper through difficult times.

Saturday’s arrests are the latest results of investigations into the ethics of the British media in the wake of revelations since last July of hacking into mobile phones and voicemails of celebrities and others in the public eye, including crime victims and their relatives.

A public outcry arose after reports surfaced that the Murdoch-owned News of the World had tapped into the voicemail of Milly Dowler, who was kidnapped and killed by a sex offender in 2002. Murdoch was forced to close the paper.

News International has pledged to pay several million dollars to victims of its practices, and faces a long list of possible lawsuits. Police say they have a list of more than 800 potential victims of phone or email hacking or surveillance by media-hired private investigators.

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Heather Mills, ex-wife of Paul McCartney, tells of phone hacking

REPORTING FROM LONDON -- Heather Mills, the former wife of Paul McCartney, on Thursday described to a British inquiry into media ethics how journalists had listened to unauthorized phone recordings of her conversations with the former Beatle and how paparazzi photographers had hounded her and her daughter.

Giving evidence to a panel formed after the phone hacking scandal linked to tabloid reporters working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Mills told how her relationship to McCartney was closely reported after the couple met in 1999.

Suggesting that phone hacking was not exclusively used by Murdoch's reporters, Mills recounted how a former employee of the Trinity Mirror group -- owner of the Daily Mirror tabloid, which was edited by TV personality Piers Morgan between 1995 and 2004 -- told her he had heard recorded phone conversations of pleading messages left on her phone by McCartney at a difficult time in their relationship.

Mills said she knew the reporter from stories he had written about her before her relationship with McCartney.

“He said, ‘Look Heather, we’ve heard that you and Paul have had an argument and I’ve just heard a message of him singing on the phone to you asking for forgiveness.’  And I said, ‘There is no way you can have heard that unless you’ve been listening to my messages,' and he laughed.”

British police arrest five in phone-hacking inquiry

REPORTING FROM LONDON --  British police arrested four journalists and a police officer and searched the offices of Rupert Murdoch's News International company Saturday as part of their inquiry into illegal phone hacking and corrupt practices between journalists and police.

The journalists were reported to be former and current senior members of the Sun, the popular tabloid owned by News International, the British branch of the Murdoch-owned News Corp. media group. 

Fergus Shanahan, a former editor, Graham Dudman, a former managing editor, Mike Sullivan, crime editor, and Chris Pharo, head of news, were all named in media reports. 

They were being questioned by police, according to a statement from London’s central Scotland Yard police station, and their homes were also being searched.

The statement confirmed that the arrests were part of Operation Elveden, the police inquiry into illegal payments accepted by police officers. It said the men "were arrested on suspicion of corruption ... aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office (contrary to common law) and conspiracy in relation to both these offenses."

Police said they also arrested a 29-year-old police officer for the same offenses and for "misconduct in public office."

British police reveal close rapport with phone-hacking tabloid

REPORTING FROM LONDON -- Journalists from the defunct British tabloid News of the World lied about their relationship with police as well as having hacked into cellphone messages in order to gather information about a missing teenager, a police document sent to Parliament revealed Monday.

The 16-page letter from Surrey police also revealed a close, almost collaborative, relationship between the press and police  and offered no reason why Surrey authorities did not investigate the paper for illegal phone hacking in 2002 after the 13-year-old schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, went missing and was later found dead.

Instead, the police appear to have followed a line of inquiry back then that was suggested by misleading information from journalists based on the girl’s hacked phone messages.

The News of the World was a popular British tabloid owned by News Corp. media mogul Rupert Murdoch,  who has been subjected to questioning on allegations of illegal phone hacking by a parliamentary committee.

Allegations made public in July of the phone hacking have been at the heart of the scandal that led Murdoch to close the newspaper and have led to ongoing police and parliamentary inquiries into British media ethics and practices.

Dowler was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered in March 2002. But for a time, her parents believed her to be still alive, based on the deletion of messages on her phone. The police letter casts no light on how the deletions occurred.

Monday’s letter to Parliament included a report on an exchange between Surrey police and News of the World journalists concerning information involving messages left on Dowler’s phone a month after her abduction. The letter shows Surrey police were fully aware that journalists were using illegal phone hacking methods yet failed to report it to the central British police authority, Scotland Yard.  

However, it specifies journalists did not obtain Dowler’s number and pin code from police, but from her classmates. Last year, the paper’s legal advisor had speculated during a parliamentary inquiry that the paper had probably obtained the information from police.

The 16-page letter said News of the World journalists informed Surrey police in April 2002, a month after Dowler’s disappearance, that they had listened to messages on Dowler’s phone from “a tearful relative” and “a young boy” and a recruitment agency offering a job. Police first thought the latter was a hoax but later deduced after conducting investigations it was a probable simple error in dialing phone numbers.

The agency later claimed it was  harassed by a News of the World journalist claiming to work for the police, asking whether the agency had called Dowler.

“What the letter shows is that several journalists at the News of the World appear to have been involved in hacking into Milly Dowler’s phone,” said John Whittingdale, head of a parliamentary inquiry into the phone hacking scandal, “and that they were doing so because they wanted to pursue the story rather than help the police.” 

James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch and chairman of the company that owned the newspaper, told Whittingdale’s inquiry last year that beyond  one journalist who served a jail sentence for phone hacking in 2007, there were no other suspected phone hackers on the editorial staff of his papers.

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Photo: News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch arrives at his home in Westminster, London, in July. Credit : Andrew Cowie / AFP/Getty Images