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Rupert Murdoch and the Corruption of the British Media


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In 1969 Rupert Murdoch purchased The Sun newspaper in 1969. He turned it into a trashy tabloid and it was not long before it had become the best-selling daily newspaper in Britain. Later that year he purchased the News of the World, Britain’s largest selling newspaper.

The two newspapers advocated extreme right-wing policies over the next ten years and played an important role in the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. He continued to support Thatcher in her decision to create mass unemployment by reducing spending on the public sector. This policy also undermined the power of the trade-unions. This enabled the Tories to pass anti-trade union legislation that helped Murdoch win his fight with the print unions.

In 1981 Murdoch purchased The Times and the Sunday Times. He also created News Corporation that controlled all his media interests. This includes film and television companies such as Sky and Fox and a large number of newspapers and magazines in the United States and various other countries. It has been claimed that he is the most important political influence in the western world.

In the late 1990s it became clear that the British public had turned against the right-wing Tory government. In the 1997 general election, the Murdoch press supported the Labour Party. This would have come as no surprise to those that had watched Murdoch’s behaviour in Australia. He had supported their Labour Party in the past. However, when they gained power with his support, they turned into a right-wing authoritarian government.

The same thing happened in Britain. After he won the 1997 election, Tony Blair abandoned his left-wing agenda and showed himself to be a Thatcherite. According to Lance Price, who worked for the Labour government, Blair would always consult Murdoch before introducing any new policy.

Murdoch was also a great supporter of the illegal invasion of Iraq. Every one of his 179 newspapers also supported this policy. He claimed at the time that the invasion would result in lower oil prices and an increase in stock market shares. His newspapers also played an important role in persuading the public that Iraq had WMD.

When Blair became unpopular with the British public he joined the plot to get Gordon Brown made the new prime minister without an election. Brown had been under the control of Murdoch for many years. However, after six months it became clear that Brown would lose the next election and so Murdoch’s newspaper’s began to support David Cameron.

Murdoch seemed untouchable. All leading politicians were too frightened to take him on. They knew he would use the whole of his media empire against them if they did that. Then something happened yesterday that might give us the opportunity to remove this terrible influence on British life.

The story begins in 2006 when members of the royal household complained that they believed that their mobile phones had been hacked into. The anti-terror police investigated the case as they feared it might be connected to a Muslim terrorist group. A few months later, Clive Goodman, a journalist working for the News of the World, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private detective, were arrested. Mulcaire confessed to hacking into the royal family’s mobile phones to listen to their voice-mail and that he had been paid to do this by Goodman.

In January 2007, Goodman was sentenced to four months in prison and Mulcaire got six months. Andy Coulson resigned as editor of the News of the World. He claimed that he knew nothing about this phone hacking. Anyone with any experience of newspapers knew that Coulson was lying. No editor would ever publish a potential libellous story without knowing the source of the story. Goodman was portrayed as a rogue reporter.

Les Hinton, the chairman of News International, appeared before a parliamentary committee and told MPs he had carried out a full investigation into the case and he was convinced that Goodman had been acting alone. The Press Complaints Commission also claimed they could find no evidence that Coulson knew anything about these illegal activities. Although he was strangely not interviewed by the PCC.

On July 9, 2007, David Cameron appointed Andy Coulson as Conservative Party Director of Communications on a salary of £450,000 a year. Why? Maybe because he is the man who knows all the secrets of the politicians.

The police supported this view that Coulson did not know anything by not bringing anymore prosecutions against News of the World reporters. However, we now know that the police did have a great deal of information about large-scale phone-hacking by Murdoch’s journalists. For example, Glenn Mulcaire had been paid £2,000 a month as a retainer fee for News Corporation. Evidence suggests he had been working for 37 different journalists. Mulcaire’s work had resulted in several scoops including those against the socialist politician, Tommy Sheridan, David Beckham (Rebecca Loos) and Sven-Goran Eriksson (Faria Alam).

Why did the police not follow up cases against these 37 journalists? How much did Murdoch pay to the police to stop these prosecutions?

The problem is that some policemen earn extra money by selling information to the press and other interested parties. One of them tipped off Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballer’s Association, that his phone had been hacked by Glenn Mulcaire. He therefore decided to sue News Corporation. In September, 2007, News Corporation paid Taylor and two of his football contacts, over a £1 million in a case that was held in secret. The people involved promised not to reveal details of the case. The High Court then joined in the conspiracy by sealing the evidence obtained from the police.

Someone, we don’t know who, tipped off Nick Davies, a reporter, about what had happened and the story appeared in yesterday’s Guardian. Rupert Murdoch immediately announced he knew nothing about this £1 million payout. This surely can be proved to be a lie.

The Guardian also provided a list of some of the people whose phones were hacked by Mulcaire. This included several cabinet ministers, including John Prescott, the former deputy prime-minister. This obviously has implications for national security. However, Prescott insists he was never told by the police that attempts had been made to hack his phone.

The most amazing response was from the police. Assistant Commissioner John Yates, quickly issued a statement that the police were unwilling to reopen the investigation into the case. Yates was of course the man who led the investigation into the corruption of Tony Blair and decided that he should not be prosecuted for any offences. I wonder how much money he was paid to reach this conclusion? How much was he paid for yesterday’s statement.

Other than the Guardian and the BBC, the rest of the media are doing what they can to ignore this story. One former editor of the Sun claimed yesterday that the whole story is a “socialist conspiracy”. The reason that even non-Murdoch papers are ignoring the story, is that they have also relied on illegal phone-hacking to get their stories and are worried where all this will lead. How many journalists will end up in prison for these offences? That is why it is important that we use the internet to expose this story.

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How about digging into the (unconfirmed) report that Murdoch was a high CIA agent

involved in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal, and that his payoff was control of major

media, where he implements CIA asset control.

Murdoch's Jewish connections are also seldom explored. (See Google)

Jack

Edited by Jack White
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How about digging into the (unconfirmed) report that Murdoch was a high CIA agent

involved in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal, and that his payoff was control of major

media, where he implements CIA asset control.

Murdoch's Jewish connections are also seldom explored. (See Google)

Jack

Robert Murdoch was protege of British black op specialist "Lord Beaverbrook" aka "Max Aitken(?)"

http://american_almanac.tripod.com/travel.htm#direct

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Murdoch's Jewish connections are also seldom explored. (See Google)

Murdoch is definitely pro-Israel and was definitely a factor in his support of the Iraq invasion.

He is also very hostile to the European Union. The reason for this is only the EU have to power to regulate his desire to obtain monopoly control of the media. British politicians are too frightened of his power to take him on.

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News Corporation has at last replied to the allegations made in the Guardian. They have now admitted that they did pay Gordon Taylor and two other men, over £1 million over the hacking into mobile phones. This seems very generous of them as they have also said that journalists working for the organization have not hacked into anybody’s phones other than that involving Clive Goodman and the royal family.

This admission also shows that Les Hinton, the chairman of News International, lied when he told a parliamentary committee that he had carried out a full investigation into the case and he was convinced that Goodman had been acting alone. The same goes for Sir Christopher Meyer, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, when he claimed that his investigation showed that other News of the World journalists were not involved in phone hacking.

It has also been revealed that Stuart Kuttner, the managing editor of the News of the World, approved all payments to Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective used in phone hacking. He resigned last week, however, News Corporation is claiming that this has nothing to do with phone hacking.

The real struggle over the next few weeks will be to get the High Court to the unsealing of the documents that were used to establish that the News of the World did illegally hack into Gordon Taylor’s phone. Even when the sealing of documents that prove illegal activity has taken place, courts are reluctant to act in these cases. It seems that police cover-ups have to be protected at all costs. After all, we cannot be allowed to know that we have a corrupt police-force.

The House of Commons Select Committee will try to get the police to release all the evidence they have on how News Corporation journalists obtained information by hacking into people’s phones. Apparently, parliament does not have the power to do this and as it will reveal police corruption, they are unlikely to approve this request.

One suggestion is the police were blackmailed into restricting their investigation into phone-hacking. It would not be surprising to discover that journalists working for News Corporation hold on senior figures at the Metropolitan Police.

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Yesterday, Nick Davies of the Guardian appeared before the House of Commons Committee on Culture. During his testimony Davies produced previously unseen documents that showed that senior figures at the News of the World were involved in the mobile phone-hacking of several individuals. This included the paper’s chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, being named as receiving the typed-up transcript of 35 messages which Glenn Mulcaire had hacked from the telephones of Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the PFA and Jo Armstrong, a legal adviser at the PFA.

A second document reveals that assistant editor, Greg Miskiw, offered Mulcaire a bonus of £7,000 if he delivers a specific story about Gordon Taylor.

Both these documents had been seized by the police during the original investigation. It is therefore hard to understand why Thurlbeck, Miskiw and Mulcaire were not prosecuted for phone-hacking. It is this evidence that resulted in Taylor and Armstrong being paid over a £1 million in an out of court settlement.

The main objective should now be to get the police to re-open the case against News Corporation journalists.

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  • 9 months later...

Since the split in the Liberal Party during the First World War the UK has been a two-party state. The “first past the post” electoral system has reinforced this idea and the Conservative-Labour Pact has meant that they could maintain this very unfair system. It has been impossible for other parties to gain ground has it has always been said that to vote for the Liberal Democrats, the Greens or any of the Socialist parties is to “waste your vote”.

The Liberal Democrats were the only major party which was totally opposed to the invasion of Iraq. It is also the only one of the three main parties that believed in a total reform of our electoral system, an introduction of a redistributive tax system and cancelling the Trident nuclear missile program. Therefore, since the invasion I have voted for the Liberal Democrats (up until then I had always voted Labour).

A couple of months ago Gordon Brown agreed that the next General Election should have three televised debates between the leaders of the Labour-Conservative-Liberal Democrats. The first debate took place last Thursday. The sight of the three party leaders together had a dramatic impact on the electorate. For the first time, the voting public saw the three men as potential prime ministers. The polls showed that as far as this debate was concerned, Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats was the clear winner.

The latest poll on intended General Election voting shows that the 32% intended to vote for the Liberal Democrats whereas the Conservatives are on 31% with Labour on 28%. These polls are changing the consciousness of the electorate. They no longer see voting Liberal Democrats as wasting their vote. I believe these polls will convince more people to vote for the Liberals. A large percentage of the electorate intended to abstain because they were so disillusioned with the behaviour of the two main parties. Now they can vote in a positive way to punish the established parties.

The General Election result will also illustrate just how unfair our electoral system is. This is how the experts are saying that the latest polls will be reflected by seats in the House of Commons: Lib Dems: 32% = 120 seats; Conservative: 31% = 230 seats; Labour: 28% = 268 seats. If this is the result, will Gordon Brown have a mandate to govern?

The result of the election may well do something to undermine the power of Rupert Murdoch. Here is an interesting article by David Yelland, the former editor of Murdoch’s Sun newspaper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...murdoch-lib-dem

I doubt if Rupert Murdoch watched the election debate last week. His focus is very firmly on the United States, especially his resurgent Wall Street Journal. But if he did, there would have been one man totally unknown to him. One man utterly beyond the tentacles of any of his family, his editors or his advisers. That man is Nick Clegg.

Make no mistake, if the Liberal Democrats actually won the election – or held the balance of power – it would be the first time in decades that Murdoch was locked out of British politics. In so many ways, a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote against Murdoch and the media elite.

I can say this with some authority because in my five years editing the Sun I did not once meet a Lib Dem leader, even though I met Tony Blair, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith on countless occasions. (Full disclosure: I have since met Nick Clegg.)

I remember in my first year asking if we staffed the Liberal Democrat conference. I was interested because as a student I'd been a founder member of the SDP. I was told we did not. We did not send a single reporter for fear of encouraging them.

So while we sent a team of five, plus assorted senior staff, to both the Tory and Labour conferences, we sent nobody to the Lib Dems. And while successive News International chiefs have held parties at both those conferences, they have never to my knowledge even attended a Lib Dem conference.

It gets even worse. While it would be wrong to say the Lib Dems were banned from Murdoch's papers (indeed, the Times has a good record in this area), I would say from personal experience that they are often banned – except where the news is critical. They are the invisible party, purposely edged off the paper's pages and ignored. But it is worse than that, because it is not just the Murdoch press that is guilty of this. The fact is that much of the print press in this country is entirely partisan and always has been. All proprietors and editors are part of the "great game". The trick is to ally yourself with the winner and win influence or at least the ear of the prime minister.

The consequence of this has been that the middle party has been ignored, simply because it was assumed it would never win power. After all, why court a powerless party?

So, as the pendulum swings from red to blue and back to red, the newspapers, or many of them, swing with it – sometimes ahead of the game and sometimes behind.

Over the years the relationships between the media elite and the two main political parties have become closer and closer to the point where, now, one is indistinguishable from the other. Indeed, it is difficult not to think that the lunatics have stopped writing about the asylum and have actually taken it over.

We now live in an era when very serious men and women stay out of politics because our national discourse is conducted by populists with no interest in politics whatsoever. What we have in the UK is a coming together of the political elite and the media in a way that makes people outside London or outside those elites feel disenfranchised and powerless. But all that would go to pot if Clegg were able to somehow pull off his miracle. For he is untainted by it.

Just imagine the scene in many of our national newspaper newsrooms on the morning a Lib-Lab vote has kept the Tories out of office. "Who knows Clegg?" they would say.

There would be a resounding silence.

"Who can put in a call to Gordon?" another would cry.

You would hear a pin drop on the editorial floor.

The fact is these papers, and others, decided months ago that Cameron was going to win. They are now invested in his victory in the most undemocratic fashion. They have gone after the prime minister in a deeply personal way and until last week they were certain he was in their sights.

I hold no brief for Nick Clegg. But now, thanks to him – an ingenue with no media links whatsoever – things look very different, because now the powerless have a voice as well as the powerful.

All of us who care about democracy must celebrate this over the coming weeks – even if Cameron wins in the end, at least some fault lines will have been exposed.

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Interesting article about Rupert Murdoch in today's Guardian. I like the comment that content is king, but the internet is a republic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/15/rupert-murdoch-paywalls-internet-content

Content is king, as we so often hear. The problem is, the internet is a republic; which means that the most exalted content has to muck in with everything else that's out there.

The biggest technology companies don't sully themselves with creating content: Google generates none (except Street View); nor does Microsoft, or Facebook, or Twitter. Even Yahoo, which has bought a company called Associated Content, is better known for the content on its photo sharing site Flickr. There's no room for kings among that democratic mess.

So how does Rupert Murdoch, a man who is fiercely certain of the value of content, restore it to what he sees as its rightful place as a money-earner in its own right? In effect, by making sure that it stays off the wider internet. BSkyB is a perfect example of controlling the endpoint of consumption: you need to have Sky's satellite dishes and Sky's receiver and Sky's encrypted card – tied to a subscription – to view it. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper that he coveted, lies behind a paywall on the web, and most recently in an iPad app (with, again, subscriptions). Fox is a cable channel, not an internet site. And it's interesting too that BSkyB and the Wall Street Journal rely on content that is fantastically time-sensitive: sports and finance. People will pay for access to those in a way they won't for the latest episode of House or a reality show.

It's instructive to compare Murdoch's success with that content with the biggest failed merger ever, of AOL and Time Warner. Those two couldn't work, because they were the internet equivalent of oil and water: one is an internet distribution company, and the other a content company. With no control of the endpoint, the losses were staggering. AOL has now been cut adrift, but not before Time Warner bled content and money all over the web.

Murdoch has experimented with the republican world of the internet, with MySpace, which News Corporation bought for $580m in 2005. Even that didn't work, because it couldn't keep people locked into the site, and when something more attractive came along, people left in droves: Facebook overtook it in 2007. When last seen, MySpace's visitor numbers were still plummeting, and nobody knows how to turn it around.

So having tried the republican model for content, and found it not to his liking, Murdoch is retreating once again to a kingdom. The paywalls being put up around the Times and Sunday Times are indicative of that thinking.

So if Murdoch has failed on the wider internet, does that mean it's impossible to make content work online? No; but you either need not to be worried about the direct cost, or confident that your strategy is definitely going to pay off in the medium and long terms. For the first example look at the BBC, where its multiple outlets – TV, radio, the web – are increasingly well-integrated: its TV and radio journalism feeds into web pages, while TV programmes are available again on the iPlayer, and radio is spread around the world over the net. The purpose there is clear – to push the BBC brand, which is an end in itself that trumps simple profit-and-loss calculations, though even there it has had to cut back recently.

Then there are the newspapers, where the Guardian and the New York Times are competing to push their content out across the web via an API – the side door to the database of stories and other content. Like the BBC's strategy, it's predicated on having no control of the endpoint, and instead having control of the feed of content, which means either charging for it or including adverts – the same model as the print newspaper, in fact.

It may be that Murdoch will be able to largely ignore the internet and keep the kingdom of content of his properties for as long as he likes, providing he can retain the two must-haves of live sports and financial information. For others, the former king may instead have to live like the Swedish royal family, cycling around with everyone else, and distinguished only in name and history.

But Rupert Murdoch never did much like bicycles.

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  • 2 months later...

How about digging into the (unconfirmed) report that Murdoch was a high CIA agent

involved in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal, and that his payoff was control of major

media, where he implements CIA asset control.

Murdoch's Jewish connections are also seldom explored. (See Google)

Jack

Care to elaborate Jack? Any vauge claim can turn up on Google, just what are these supposed connections and why are they relevant? Is being connected to Jews a bad thing? What about your friend Fetzer's numerous conections to anti-Semites? [such as Barrett, Bollyn, Fox, May, Shahank, Atzmon and "Pastore" to name a few.]

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Murdoch learned his trade under the tutelage Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken).

http://www.evesmag.com/murdoch.htm

Lord Beaverbrook on the other hand was an intimate of Joseph Kennedy Sr.

"The friendship between Beaverbrook and the Kennedys dated back to the time Joe was ambassador in London. In 1956 Kennedy had endowed a Lord Beaverbrook chair at the University of Notre Dame. Now he wanted the favor returned. He asked Beaverbrook to arrange a meeting with Sir Winston Churchill who's support for Jack's presidential run the following year would be useful. But Kennedy had been a vigorous advocate of appeasement toward the Nazis in 1940, and both Randolph Churchill and his fathers private secretary Anthony Browne were fiercly opposed to the meeting.

....... Churchill decided that "If Max (Beaverbrook) attaches importance to it, I will go. But it must not appear in the press."

http://books.google.com/books?id=h_1JgryEAygC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=lord+beaverbrook,+joe+kennedy+sr.&source=bl&ots=7S2_Hzyl0e&sig=bxdPBnvtow0XL09nABZZS8CIJSI&hl=en&ei=F_iETJ2yH9SpnQeoxeHYAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCcQ6AEwBA

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News Corporation has at last replied to the allegations made in the Guardian. They have now admitted that they did pay Gordon Taylor and two other men, over £1 million over the hacking into mobile phones. This seems very generous of them as they have also said that journalists working for the organization have not hacked into anybody’s phones other than that involving Clive Goodman and the royal family.

This admission also shows that Les Hinton, the chairman of News International, lied when he told a parliamentary committee that he had carried out a full investigation into the case and he was convinced that Goodman had been acting alone. The same goes for Sir Christopher Meyer, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, when he claimed that his investigation showed that other News of the World journalists were not involved in phone hacking.

It has also been revealed that Stuart Kuttner, the managing editor of the News of the World, approved all payments to Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective used in phone hacking. He resigned last week, however, News Corporation is claiming that this has nothing to do with phone hacking.

The real struggle over the next few weeks will be to get the High Court to the unsealing of the documents that were used to establish that the News of the World did illegally hack into Gordon Taylor’s phone. Even when the sealing of documents that prove illegal activity has taken place, courts are reluctant to act in these cases. It seems that police cover-ups have to be protected at all costs. After all, we cannot be allowed to know that we have a corrupt police-force.

The House of Commons Select Committee will try to get the police to release all the evidence they have on how News Corporation journalists obtained information by hacking into people’s phones. Apparently, parliament does not have the power to do this and as it will reveal police corruption, they are unlikely to approve this request.

One suggestion is the police were blackmailed into restricting their investigation into phone-hacking. It would not be surprising to discover that journalists working for News Corporation hold on senior figures at the Metropolitan Police.

It might be worth summarising this story so far.

August 2005: Private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, is secretly paid by the News of the World, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, to hack into the phone messages of Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association.

November 2005: The News of the World royal editor, Clive Goodman, commissions Glen Mulcaire to hack into the phone messages of staff at St. James’s Palace. Stories appear in Murdoch newspapers about Prince William that the royal family conclude that must have come from intercepting their telephone calls.

December 2005: The Royal Family communicate their suspicions to Scotland Yard. Andy Hayman leads the investigation into the possibility of the staff at St. James’s Palace and members of the royal family having their phone messages hacked. Hayman, the Metropolitan Police Service's Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations, a role which placed him in overall charge of counter-terrorism operations. It seems that this suggests that initially, the police thought the phone hacking was being carried out by terrorists.

April 2006: Hayman discovers that the hacking of the royal telephones was being done by the News of the World.

August 2006: Hayman and his officers come to the conclusion that the News of the World has been hacking the phones of a large number of people. A memo dated 8th August stated that the “investigation was likely to reveal a vast array of offending behaviour”. However, it was decided to “focus on a discrete area of offending relating to JLP and HA.” This is a reference to Jamie Lee Pinkerton (JLP) and Helen Asprey (HA), two members of the royal staff.

October 2006: The Metropolitan Police Service raid the offices of the News of the World and arrest Clive Goodman. However, the search-warrant is restricted to Goodman’s desk. This enabled others working at the newspaper to destroy incriminating information. One journalist in the building at the time, described seeing two senior members of staff removing “black bin bags full of paperwork from their office desks”. The police also arrest Glenn Mulcaire. They also have search-warrants for the homes of Goodman and Mulcaire. According to the Guardian this included the mobile phone numbers of 2,978 people as well as 30 audiotapes of voicemail messages and 91 secret PINs for accessing voicemail for the minority of people who change their factory-set PIN. The police recorded at the time that “a vast number of unique voicemail numbers belonging to high-profile individuals (politicians, celebrities) have been identified as being accessed without authority.”

November 2006: Goodman and Mulcaire admit conspiracy to intercept calls “without lawful authority”. Andy Coulson, the editor of the News of the World, denies knowing about the telephone hacking. At the time, several former editors go on record as saying this is unbelievable as the News of the World would not have published these stories without knowing where the information had come from.

January 2007: Goodman sentenced to four months in prison. Mulcaire gets six months. Andy Coulson, the editor of the News of the World, resigns, still claiming he knew nothing about the phone hacking.

July 2007: Andy Coulson is appointed by David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, as his Director of Communications.

Over the next few months members of Metropolitan Police Service began leaking information of the phone hacking to the victims. This included Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, Max Clifford, a press agent for several stars and football agent, Sky Andrew, whose clients include Sol Campbell and Jermain Defoe.

December 2007: Andy Hayman is forced to resign from the Metropolitan Police following allegations about expense claims and alleged improper conduct with a female member of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and a female Sergeant. He was also heavily criticised by the IPCC over the mistaken shooting dead of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Underground station on 22 July 2005.

January 2008: Andy Hayman is employed by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, as a columnist. The very organisation that he failed to investigate properly in 2006. In other words, this is his payoff for not arresting Andy Coulson and other senior figures at the News of the World.

In July 2009 News Corporation paid Gordon Taylor and two other men, over £1 million over the hacking into mobile phones. This was followed by another £1 million to Max Clifford. These cases were settled out of court and so no details have been revealed about who was behind this hacking. There is an estimated 20 other cases pending. Hopefully, some of these people will insist that the evidence is presented in court.

In September 2010 the New York Times claims it has interviewed several journalists who worked for the New York Times who claim that Andy Coulson knew all about the phone hacking. However, only one of these witnesses, Sean Hoare, is named. A smear campaign is launched against Hoare who is described as someone who was sacked for drink and drug problems.

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The strangest aspect of this case was why did David Cameron employ Andy Coulson as his Director of Communications, only six months after he was forced to resign because of the strong suspicion that he had ordered journalists to hack the phones of politicians. This straight away illustrated that Cameron was willing to engage in dirty tricks in order to win the next election.

Could it be that Cameron had no choice in the matter? Is Cameron being blackmailed by Coulson? I suspect that the private detectives employed by Coulson were not only getting information for the News of the World but was also getting the dirt on Labour MPs for Conservative Party headquarters. If that is the case, can you imagine what impact this would have on the public if this information came out in court.

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John Yates, the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, announced today that he intends to interview Sean Hoare and Andy Coulson. I would also suggest he also interviews Andy Hayman, who carried out the original investigation, about his relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

He also needs to interview the following News of the World journalists: Ross Hall (transcribed illegally-hacked phone messages); Neville Thurlbeck (News of the World chief reporter who appears on compromising emails and memos); Sharon Marshall (News of the World reporter who told the New York Times that she witnessed phone hacking whilst working for the newspaper) and Matt Driscoll (News of the World journalist who claimed he was shown private phone records belonging to Rio Ferdinand by a senior editor).

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