Douglas Caddy

Phone hacking: files on journalists and police officer sent to CPS The first criminal charges since the full extent of the phone hacking scandal was exposed last year, moved a step closer today when detectives passed four files to prosecutors for consideration. By Martin Evans, Crime Correspondent The Telegraph 2:22PM BST 18 Apr 2012 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/9211679/Phone-hacking-files-on-journalists-and-police-officer-sent-to-CPS.html The allegations relate to four journalists, one police officer and six other individuals and cover a range of alleged offences. While the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) refused to reveal the identities of those in the files, it is believed the allegations under consideration relate, among others, to Guardian journalist Amelia Hill, former News International chief executive, Rebekah Brooks and former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck. Giving details of the development, Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, said the four files related to investigations being carried out by the Metropolitan Police – Operations Weeting, Elveden, Tuleta, Kilo and Sacha. The four files include: • One journalist and one police officer with relation to alleged offences of misconduct in public office and the Data Protection Act. • One journalist and six other members of the public with relation to alleged offences of perverting the course of justice. • One journalist with relation to alleged offences of witness intimidation and harassment. • One journalist with relation to alleged offences under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). A total of 43 people are currently on bail in connection with the various police operations, but Mr Starmer said not all of those in the files passed to the CPS had been arrested. Miss Hill was questioned under caution in September last year over allegations that she was in receipt of leaked information from the phone hacking investigation. A police officer was also arrested in connection with the allegations. Mrs Brooks was arrested for a second time last month along with her husband Charlie and four other people by officers investigating allegations of a cover up in the phone hacking inquiry. Mr Thurlbeck was also arrested last month by police investigating claims that he posted information related to a member of the News Corporation’s Management and Standards Committee on his blog. It remains unclear who the journalist is in the file connected to alleged breaches of RIPA. The CPS will now consider the evidence collected by police before announcing whether to bring charges in any of the cases. Mr Starmer refused to give a timescale for a charging decision but said: “We are now entering a period where we are likely to make a decision one way or another.” Today’s announcement came as Britain's top prosecutor published guidelines setting out how journalists may have broken the law. Mr Starmer said the new rules would help lawyers with the "very difficult decisions". "The decisions we are going to make are going to be extremely difficult and extremely sensitive," he said. "We have got to make a decision because these cases are coming. We cannot duck that."

Poster's note: article lists upcoming books on JFK assassination. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19018

Discover a Publisher: TrineDay Publishers Weekly By March Schultz April 13, 2012 http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/tip-sheet/article/51506-discover-a-publisher-trineday. This week, the Tip Sheet kicks off a new feature, where we look at one of the many, many publishing houses toiling outside the mainstream. Our inaugural subject is TrineDay, an Oregon publisher covering subject matter too taboo for the Big Six, including investigations into 9/11, the JFK assassination, and elite secret societies like Skull & Bones. Who it is: TrineDay was established in 2002 by Kris Millegan, an academic-minded (and self-described) “conspiracy theorist” whose father was deeply involved with the U.S. intelligence community his entire career, beginning a decade before the formation of the OSS. In 1969, Millegan’s father began filling Millegan in on the operations he had been a part of in Vietnam, the Phillipines, and here in the U.S., involving (among other revelations) secret CIA drug experiments and cloistered societies pulling strings at the highest levels of government. That revelation led Millegan to study conspiracy theory as an academic discipline for some ten years. He started writing about the CIA, drugs, and secret societies, but couldn’t find a publisher for his work. “I sent off work to Feral House,” he told PW from TrineDay’s Walterville, Ore. office. “I figured they did some pretty wild stuff, but I got a note back saying they did not want to take on Skull & Bones.” What it does: Millegan established TrineDay as a home for “interesting, well-researched and well-written books with but one key ‘defect’: a challenge to official history that would tend to rock the boat of America’s corporate ‘culture.’” With a catalog of more than 40 books (plus 10 out-of-print titles), TrineDay is releasing a dozen new titles in 2012—most recently A Whig Manifesto: A Short History of the Whig Movement with Modern Party Perspectives on Current Political and Social Controversies by Chuck Morse, just released on April 15. After the internet came along, Millegan began running an email list called CIA Drugs, through which he found his first project, a book by Daniel Hopsicker that had been languishing at a New York agency. On a whim—“silly me, I thought ‘there’s the Constitution and stuff, this guy has been seen internationally on NBC and elsewhere, he has quite a book,’ and I said I have a computer on my desk and they tell me it can make a book.” In 2000, they published Barry and the “Boys”: The CIA, the Mob, and America’s Secret History under the name MadCowPress. Less then two years later, TrineDay’s first act was to rescue the first volume to take on the shadowy Skull & Bones society from going out of print: thanks to Millegan, Anthony Sutton’s America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones is still available in paperback. How it gets by: TrineDay is a four-and-a-half man operation consisting of two editors, a “computer graphics guy,” a part-time office manager, and publisher Millegan (“I do the typesetting and stuff like that”). Their biggest seller is The True Story of the Bilderberg Group by Daniel Estulin, a “fascinating account of the annual meetings of the world’s most powerful people,” a collection of “Europeon prime ministers, American presidents, and the wealthiest CEOs of the world” which, since its 1954 inception, has never released any statements or allowed press coverage. TrineDay currently has a staggering 70,000 copies of Bilderberg in print: “We’re not even a small publisher—we’re a micro-publisher. That book sold over 2 million copies in Europe before we got it, and this guy’s agent was the agent for Dean Koontz, he had access to everyone in American publishing.” Despite its success, no one on this side of the pond would publish it, until, “finally, the author contacted me directly, and we got it going for him. It’s been translated into Chinese and Russian, sold over 4 million copies worldwide—you’d think someone in New York would see it and think, ‘maybe I can make a shekel or two on this one.” What’s next: Millegan also remarks that “there’s a lot of history out there we haven’t been told. As one of my authors says, ‘Sometimes you aren’t in a position to tell history and all you can do is take notes.’ We’ve been presenting thenotes of a lot of people. These stories have to be discussed, even if it’s only to say ‘this is crazy and completely wrong.’” Some upcoming releases Millegan is especially excited for: From an Office Building with a High-Powered Rifle: One FBI Agent’s View of the JFK Assassination by Don Adams, out on May 22. “This is from an 82-year-old former FBI agent who was used by people in the FBI to help set up part of the Kennedy Assassination. It was not as simple as Oswald shooting three shots, they had to lay a bunch of groundwork. This agent was transferred to the Dallas office in June of ’64, was involved with the investigation, it’s a very direct personal viewpoint of the assassination and the investigation that show the manipulation and fraud that went on. A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination by H.P. Albarelli Jr, out on June 21. “Albarelli is a very thorough investigator, an attorney. This is going to bring out some of the nuances of the Kennedy assassination.” Bonds of Secrecy: The True Story of CIA Spy and Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt by Saint John Hunt, out on August 22. “Another one we have is on E. Howard Hunt, the Watergate burgler, who was also a peripheral player in the JFK assassination, from his son. Before his death, Howard confided some things and passed on some documents to his son, which continue to confirm what my dad started talking about to me in 1969.” Black 9/11: How Cutting-Edge Technology Was Used Against the American People on September 11, 2001 by Mark H. Gaffney, out on Sept. 11. “It was supposed to be out last September, but Gaffney really uncovered soemt hings, goes into the Black Budget, Black Technology, and the Black Motive behind 9/11. It’s very well done, puts together a bunch of things that haven’t been put together before.” Where to buy: Millegan suggests looking “anyplace find books are sold.” He reports that Barnes & Noble has carried “quite a few of our books,” but readers can also check online at TrineDay.com and Amazon, or call TrineDay direct at 1-800-556-2012.

Chuck Colson Talking, Showing Slow Progress After Surgery By Lillian Kwon , Christian Post Reporter Christianpost.com April 14, 2012|4:24 pm Two weeks after brain surgery, evangelical leader Chuck Colson is able to talk to family members and continues to show progress, but he remains in the Intensive Care Unit, according to the latest update. Jim Liske, CEO of Prison Fellowship Ministries which Colson founded, said Thursday that there has not been much change in Colson's condition since last week when he gave doctors a thumbs up. Liske assured supporters, however, that the influential evangelical "is in one of the best medical centers in the country for the issues he is facing right now." The Christian Post learned earlier that Colson is staying at a northern Virginia hospital. Colson, 80, fell ill while speaking at the Breaking the Spiral of Silence conference on March 30 in Lansdowne, Va. According to author Eric Metaxas, who was at the event, Colson "looked unsteady" and was taken to the hospital. Colson suffered an intracerebral hemorrhage. He underwent surgery the following morning to remove a pool of clotted blood on his brain and has been recovering since. Along with being able to talk, Colson can also hear and process information as well as execute demands, doctors reported. Liske said the many prayers that have been going out to the Colson family have been an encouragement to them and asked for continuous support. "What you can ask God for: ... encouragement and patience for Chuck – a man always on the go! – as he deals with the slow pace of improvement," Liske requested of supporters.

James Cusick: Leveson can probe the Yard's conduct Far from being unified, there was a civil war which damaged its ability to do its job The Independent By James Cusick Monday, 16 April 2012 A casual visitor to the Royal Courts of Justice in recent weeks would have been forgiven for thinking it was only the behaviour of the Fourth Estate that was at issue during the Leveson Inquiry's probings into relations between the press and the police. Certainly, Scotland Yard's top brass was pushed and prodded about the failure of the original phone-hacking inquiry – the refusal to pull back the curtain at Wapping and reveal the full extent of the rot that had set in at the News of the World. But while the Yard has some justification in citing its duty to defend London's citizens from harm as part of the reason for its peculiar failure to follow the evidence in 2006, neither Leveson nor the Met itself has shone a sufficiently bright light into the internal divisions that also hobbled Britain's largest force. Today, The Independent reveals another side of the Met's modus operandi during this period. Far from being a unified force determined to protect the public, it appears there was a highly politicised civil war in progress that could only have damaged its ability to do its job. When the Leveson Inquiry examined the relationship between the press and police, it should have gone further in probing the criticisms that former and acting Met officers were throwing at each other during questioning. The existence of an internal report suggesting the Met's management board was "compromised" and leaking to the media raises the question of how Britain's police functioned, or rather malfunctioned, when it should have been exposing the sham that was News International's so-called internal inquiry into hacking. Lord Leveson needs to re-question both Lords Stevens and Blair and publish the internal-intelligence papers that marred this period of the Met's history. More private assurances from Scotland Yard will not be enough.

No objection from here as previously indicated. The article's primary and perhaps only redeeming feature is to remind us that there was a legitimate question about the behavior of some of the SS agents in Dallas in the 24 hours leading up to Kennedy being assassinated. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14061

Poster's note: I am posting this article even though it is not directly related to the JFK assassination topic. My reasoning is that there have been serious allegations of misconduct by Secret Service agents in the JFK killing and here it is again almost 50 years later with yet another president whose life is being put at risk by those whose job is to protect him. (I have no objection if our moderators choose to move this article to another forum topic.) --------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Secret Service agents leave Colombia over prostitution inquiry Washington Post By David Nakamura and Joe Davidson Published: April 13, 2012 The U.S. Secret Service is investigating allegations of misconduct by agents who had been sent to Cartagena, Colombia, to provide security for President Obama’s trip to a summit that began there Friday. Edwin Donovan, an agency spokesman, said that an unspecified number of agents have been recalled and replaced with others, stressing that Obama’s security has not been compromised because of the change. Obama arrived in Cartagena on Friday afternoon for this weekend’s Summit of the Americas, a gathering of 33 of the hemisphere’s 35 leaders to discuss economic policy and trade. Donovan declined to disclose details about the nature of the alleged misconduct. But Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, said the accusations relate to at least one agent having involvement with prostitutes in Cartagena. In a statement, Donovan said the matter has been turned over to the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which serves as the agency’s internal affairs unit. “The Secret Service takes all allegations of misconduct seriously,” Donovan said. “These personnel changes will not affect the comprehensive security plan that has been prepared in advance of the President’s trip.” Adler said the entire unit was recalled for purposes of the investigation. The Secret Service “responded appropriately” and is “looking at a very serious allegation,” he said, adding that the agency “needs to properly investigate and fairly ascertain the merits of the allegations.” The Washington Post was alerted to the investigation by Ronald Kessler, a former Post reporter and author of several nonfiction books, including the book “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect.” Kessler said he was told that a dozen agents had been removed from the trip. He added that soliciting prostitution is considered inappropriate by the Secret Service, even though it is legal in Colombia when conducted in designated “tolerance zones.” However, Kessler added, several of the agents involved are married. There have been other incidents involving Obama’s security detail over the past year. In November, Christopher W. Deedy, a federal agent with the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, was charged with second-degree murder after shooting a man during a dispute outside a McDonald’s in Hono­lulu. Though Deedy was off-duty at the time, he was on the island to provide advance security arrangements for Obama’s trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. In August, Daniel L. Valencia, a Secret Service agent, was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in Decorah, Iowa, where he was helping arrange security for Obama’s bus trip through three Midwestern states. Valencia, who was off-duty at the time of the arrest, was recently sentenced to two days in jail with credit for time served, and a fine of $1,250.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/magazine/robert-caros-big-dig.html?ref=magazine

Seymour Hersh: Assassination Of JFK Was Form Of “justice” "Just didn’t have the guts to put in writing what I came to believe… was an inevitable conclusion,” he wrote. By James Kirchick BuzzFeed Contributor posted Apr 11, 2012 9:51am EDT http://www.buzzfeed.com/jamiekirchick/seymour-hersh-assassination-of-jfk-was-form-of-l-55m2 [click on link to view Hersh letter] "There might have been some justice" in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said in a letter to a reader. Hersh made the shocking suggestion in 1998 correspondence with Albert Alioto, a San Francisco bus driver who had written to the New Yorker journalist about his controversial book about the Kennedy clan, The Dark Side of Camelot. “If your portraits of John and Robert Kennedy are essentially accurate, given the emphasis on assassination plotting,” Alioto asked, “do you see any moral difference between the Kennedys and Oswald and Sirhan?” Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan were, respectively, the killers of JFK and his younger brother Robert. “The morality of JFK in comparison with Oswald and/or Sirhan,” are “obvious questions,” wrote Hersh — whose latest story for the New Yorker alleges that the United States is training members of an Iranian terrorist group in Nevada. The 35th president’s backing of assassination attempts against Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Hersh explained, meant that he was as immoral the men who took his and his brother’s lives. “I just didn’t have the guts to put in writing what I came to believe, as you do, was an inevitable conclusion,” Hersh wrote of the death of a president, which he also called “terrible.” Hersh appears to have taken Alioto’s letter to be an endorsement of Kennedy’s assassination as a form of payback for plotting against Castro, which Alioto said he didn’t intend. “I was not trying to say that the assassinations of the Kennedys were a form of justice,” Alioto, 58, wrote in a letter this year. (He shared the 1998 document after seeing this reporter’s criticism of Hersh in the magazine Commentary.) “I didn’t regard his book as ‘essentially accurate.’” To stress his purely conjectural intentions, Alioto told Hersh that, on the subject of any moral equivalence between JFK, RFK and their assassins, “I ask the question purely out of curiosity.” Hersh made his view clear: “You’re right in believing, if that’s what your letter suggested, that there might have been some justice — one reviewer wrote ‘rough justice’ -- in John F. Kennedy’s terrible death by assassination, a means he had sought to end Fidel Castro’s life.” The Dark Side of Camelot, published in 1997, was enormously controversial for its thinly-sourced claims, and Hersh suffered professional embarrassment when it was revealed that he had been fooled by a series of fake documents bearing the late president’s signature. Hersh was forced to remove mention of the papers from the book’s galleys at the last minute. Hersh was initially able to parlay the documents into a television deal with NBC, which later pulled out over “creative differences” with Hersh and suspicions that the documents were fake. (Some of the book’s then-scandalous claims about the slain president’s promiscuity gained credence this year in a memoir published this year by one of Kennedy's former lovers, Mimi Alford.) According to Hersh, it was this widespread negative reaction to the book, and not any factual or moral misgivings, which prevented him from making the comparison between “Oswald and/or Sirhan” and JFK explicit. “I had enough trouble getting through the reviews and press comments on my book, and its very unpopular conclusions about Kennedy’s presidency, without getting into the issue you raise,” Hersh wrote. Asked about the letter, which appears to have been typed on a blank sheet of paper, Hersh did not deny authoring it but expressed surprise because he tends to write on New Yorker letterhead. He didn’t reply to an email inquiry through a colleague that included a scan of the letter. James Kirchick is a fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a contributing editor for The New Republic and World Affairs Journal.

Lawyer says British phone hacking scandal could spread to U.S. Los Angeles Times April 12, 2012 | 8:07 am 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.” He also said that of his three clients, whom he declined to identify, one had connections to Hollywood, another to the late Princess Diana and the third to English national soccer. The hacking scandal intensified last July with revelations that journalists on Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid had been hacking into the mobile phone of slain teenager Milly Dowler and her family in 2003 in search of scoops. The subsequent outcry prompted Murdoch to close the publication and public officials to launch police investigations and inquiries into media practices. The octogenarian Murdoch and his son James both appeared before a parliamentary panel but said they had no knowledge of phone hacking beyond one rogue reporter and a private investigator, both of whom served jail sentences for hacking into the phones of the British royal family in 2007. Their claims were later disputed by News of the World executives. James Murdoch recently quit as chairman of the satellite TV station BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting) after his resignation in February as chief executive of News International. The Murdochs have pledged and paid out millions of dollars in compensation in dozens of out-of-court settlements. Phone hacking victims include celebrities such as actor Jude Law, singer Charlotte Church, former British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, friends of the British royal family as well as crime victims and people associated with them. Police and parliamentary panels and a civil inquiry looking into media practices have resulted in more than 40 arrests of media executives, government officials and journalists and prompted the resignation of several high-ranking police officials

News International braced as lawyer brings phone-hacking scandal to US Lawyer's visit brings UK scandal to Rupert Murdoch's front door and raises prospect of lawsuits involving US legal system By Ed Pilkington in New York guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 April 2012 15.43 EDT Mark Lewis, the lawyer who has been at the forefront of efforts to expose the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, is poised to bring the battle for legal redress across the Atlantic and to the doorstep of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. Lewis will arrive in the US on Saturday and next week will begin legal discussions in New York, just a stone's throw away from News Corporation's global headquarters on Sixth Avenue. His arrival constitutes a major escalation in the legal ramifications of the hacking scandal for Murdoch, who has tried desperately to keep it away from the American core of his multi-billion-dollar media holdings. Details remain sketchy about precisely what Lewis intends to do in the US, but the Guardian has learned that he will be having legal discussions that could lead to several lawsuits being lodged with the New York courts. The direct involvement of the US judicial system in allegations of illegal activity by News Corp employees would bring the scandal dramatically closer to Murdoch's adopted home. It is not yet known how many lawsuits could result. Lewis will be in discussions with his New York-based legal partner, Norman Siegel, former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, over the details of US law as it applies to phone hacking. The cases they will be exploring are understood to relate mainly to celebrities who have come to the US and had their phones hacked while they were in the country. That could constitute a violation of US telecommunications and privacy laws. It is also understood that a US citizen had his or her phone hacked while in America as a result of hacking into the transatlantic conversation of a foreign-based celebrity who was a friend of the victim. Jude Law has been one of the celebrities believed to have their phones hacked while in the US, in this case while he was at JFK airport in New York. However, the Guardian understands that Law is not one of the cases that is currently being explored by Lewis and Siegel. So far, the US component of the hacking scandal has been confined to an FBI and department of justice investigation under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that forbids corporations headquartered in the US, as News Corporation is, from indulging in acts of bribery or corruption abroad. Any lawsuit that flows from Lewis's US activities would take the scandal to another level by becoming the first legal action to arise domestically within the US. Lewis has been a crucial figure in the exposure of the billowing phone-hacking saga. He represents the family of Milly Dowler, the missing teenager whose phone was hacked by the News of the World. He also represented Gordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballers' Association, who received more than $1m from News International, the UK newspaper arm of News Corporation, in a settlement over the hacking of his phone. Lewis's involvement with the scandal has also been deeply personal: he was himself put under surveillance by the News of the World before it was shut down by Murdoch. The paper hired a specialist private investigator to covertly surveil him and his family. Lewis will be attending a symposium on investigative journalism at UC Berkeley this weekend where he will be speaking on a panel titled: "The Murdoch Effect: The News At Any Price?" An irony of the arrival of Lewis in the US is that it comes soon after James Murdoch, Rupert's youngest son, relocated from the UK to New York partially, it is thought, in a move to try and distance him from the phone-hacking scandal. James Murdoch announced that he was stepping down as nonexecutive chairman of the broadcaster BskyB last week, but Lewis's deliberations over possible legal action in the New York courts brings the nightmare back to haunt him.

The Outing of Deep Throat by Patrick J. Buchanan April 11, 2012 www.lewrockwell.com As the 40th anniversary of Watergate impends, we are to be bathed again in the great myth and morality play about the finest hour in all of American journalism. The myth? That two heroic young reporters at the Washington Post, guided by a secret source, a man of conscience they dubbed "Deep Throat," cracked the case and broke the scandal wide open, where the FBI, U.S. prosecutors and more experienced journalists floundered and failed. Through their tireless investigative reporting, they compelled the agencies of government to treat Watergate as the unprecedented constitutional crisis it was. No Pulitzer Prize was ever more deserved than the one awarded the Post in 1973. These young journalists saved our republic! However, the myth, fabricated in All the President's Men and affirmed by the 1976 film of the same name, with Robert Redford as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein, has a Hellfire missile coming its way. Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat is an exhaustive study of the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein and the leaking by the FBI's Mark Felt, whose identify as Deep Throat was revealed in 2005. Leak author Max Holland zeroes in on the last great unanswered question of Watergate: Why did Felt, an FBI No. 2 on the short list to succeed J. Edgar Hoover, risk reputation and career to leak secrets to the Post? Woodward and Bernstein paint Deep Throat, writes Holland, as a "selfless high-ranking official intent on exposing the lawlessness of the Nixon White House." But this is self-serving nonsense. The truth was right in front of Woodward. His refusal to see it made him a willing or witless collaborator in the ruin of the reputation and career of an honorable pubic servant, Patrick Gray. Felt was consumed by anger and ambition. When Hoover died, a month before the break-in, Felt, who had toadied to Hoover, saw himself as Hoover's successor. But President Nixon went outside the bureau to name Gray from the Department of Justice acting director. Concealing his rage and resentment, Felt wormed himself into Gray's confidence, and then set out to destroy Gray. Felt's method: Leak discoveries of the Watergate investigation to a cub reporter at the Post, which everybody in Washington read, rather than to veteran journalists known to be FBI outlets. This would cover Felt's tracks. Published in the Post, the leaks of what the FBI was uncovering would enrage Nixon and make Gray appear an incompetent unable to conduct a professional investigation. This would make it unlikely that Nixon would ever send Gray's name to the Senate for confirmation as permanent director. And if Gray, an outsider, fell because he couldn't keep the FBI from leaking, Nixon might turn to Felt, the ranking insider who could button up the bureau like Hoover did. By ingratiating himself with Gray as he set out to discredit and destroy him, Felt expected that when Gray was passed over by Nixon, he would recommend to Nixon that he appoint his loyal deputy, Felt, as director. Even if cynical and vicious, the scheme was clever. Until Nixon found out Felt was the leaker in late 1972, he was considering Felt for the top job. Felt's machinations and deceptions at the apex of the FBI make Nixon's White House appear in retrospect to have been a cloistered convent of Carmelite nuns. More revolting than the ruin of Gray's reputation was what Felt did to the good name of the bureau he professed to love. By leaking what agents were learning about Watergate, he was discrediting the FBI. Inside the government, he made the FBI look like an agency of bumblers who could not keep secrets. Outside the government, the FBI looked like a three-toed sloth, while a fleet-footed and fearless Washington Post was unearthing the truth. The FBI appeared beaten at every turn by the brilliant Post, when it was the FBI's homework Felt was stealing and the Post was cribbing. Woodward and Bernstein were glorified stenographers. And though Deep Throat was portrayed as a man sickened by the wiretaps and break-ins by the White House, Felt himself, writes Holland, "authorized illegal surreptitious entries into the homes of people associated with the Weather Underground." In 1979, Felt was prosecuted and convicted and then pardoned by Reagan. In The Secret Man, Woodward calls Felt "a truth-teller." That's quite a tribute to an FBI man who lied to Pat Gray, lied to all of his FBI colleagues and lied to every journalist who asked him for 30 years whether he was Deep Throat. If Felt was a hero, why did he not come forward to tell the country what he had done and why? Because he was no hero. Mark Felt was a snake. He used the Post to destroy his rivals and advance his ambitions, and the Post didn't care what his motives were because Felt was assisting them in destroying their old enemy. Yes, indeed, the finest hour in American journalism. April 11, 2012 Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? See his website.

Frank H. Strickler, Watergate Defense Lawyer, Dies at 92 The New York Times By DOUGLAS MARTIN April 9, 2012 Frank H. Strickler, a Washington lawyer who represented two of President Richard M. Nixon’s top aides, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, in the tangled legal aftermath of the 1972 Watergate break-in and its cover-up, died March 29 at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. He was 92. His family announced the death. Mr. Strickler participated in several dramatic moments in the aftermath of the burglary at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington on June 17, 1972. But he did not leap into the case at the first opportunity. The day of the break-in, he grumpily answered the phone at his vacation home in Bethany Beach, Del., after being awakened at 4:30 a.m. The caller was E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. agent who was later convicted for helping organize the Watergate operation, according to the book “Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years” (1973), by J. Anthony Lukas. “You think I’m going to interrupt my vacation and represent anybody like that?” Mr. Strickler said. “You’re crazy!” But as the case evolved into an investigation of the cover-up by Nixon and his aides, Mr. Strickler and one of his law partners, John J. Wilson, agreed to represent Mr. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, and Mr. Ehrlichman, his counsel and domestic policy adviser. Mr. Ehrlichman later retained his own lawyer, a decision Mr. Strickler said made strategic sense. In one of Watergate’s tensest moments, Mr. Strickler and Mr. Wilson met for an hour and six minutes with President Nixon on April 19, 1973, in an effort to persuade him not to request the resignation of their clients. John Dean, the White House counsel, had begun cooperating with prosecutors in the hope of lenient treatment for himself. Both Mr. Haldeman and Mr. Ehrlichman had reason to worry about the testimony of Mr. Dean, who was estranged from them. In the White House, the pair were called “the Berlin Wall,” as much for their power as for their Germanic names. According to Mr. Lukas, Mr. Strickler told the president that removal of his clients would strike the public as “an admission of guilt.” Nixon replied that the two were “great, fine Americans” and that he would try to save them. He fired Mr. Dean and accepted the resignations of Mr. Haldeman and Mr. Ehrlichman on April 30. On the eve of Nixon’s own resignation on Aug. 9, 1974, Mr. Haldeman wanted to make made a last-ditch bid for a presidential pardon. Mr. Strickler again was at the center of the action. He told his client to write a personal memo to Nixon. He and Mr. Wilson supplied legal backup. They suggested pardoning all those accused or convicted of crimes related to Watergate, as well as all Vietnam-era draft evaders. Nixon elected to do neither. In February 1974, investigators offered Mr. Ehrlichman a chance to plead guilty to a single charge in return for his help in building a case against others. He said no. “His feeling was that he could not plead guilty to something that he did not believe he was guilty of doing,” Mr. Strickler said in an interview with The New York Times. In “Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution” (1977), the Watergate prosecutors Richard Ben-Veniste and George Frampton Jr. wrote that Mr. Haldeman was offered, and turned down, a similar deal. Both men were eventually convicted and sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison. The sentences were commuted to one to four years. Each served a total of 18 months. Before the trial of Mr. Haldeman, Mr. Ehrlichman and three other Nixon aides began in November 1974, Mr. Strickler unsuccessfully argued that the case against Mr. Haldeman be dismissed because of the leaking of potentially damaging grand jury testimony. During the trial, Mr. Strickler contended that Mr. Haldeman’s intercession in the F.B.I.’s initial Watergate investigation resulted from his desire to protect a sensitive C.I.A. operation in Mexico. He also argued that Mr. Haldeman was busy with matters far more important to the nation than Watergate. He called the matter “no more than a pimple on the mound of his other duties.” Frank Hunter Strickler was born on Jan. 20, 1920, in Washington, and earned undergraduate and law degrees from George Washington University. He helped pay for his education by working as a fingerprint examiner for the F.B.I. He served in the merchant marine during World War II as a seaman and cook. He was a federal prosecutor in Washington in the early 1950s, and then in private practice. Mr. Strickler is survived by his wife of 57 years, Ellis Barnard Strickler; his daughters, Nancy Strickler Borah and Elizabeth Ann Strickler; his sons, Frank and Charles; and three grandchildren.

Nixon alienated forever a large and powerful group of Americans when serving in Congress he championed Whittaker Chambers in the epoch Alger Hiss drama. He was a staunch and vigilant anti-communist but was careful in marshalling his facts in contrast to Senator Joe McCarthy. I told my closest friends in Washington shortly after the first week following the Watergate arrests that I believed Nixon would ultimately be forced out of office over the scandal. When John Kilcullen, a partner of the law firm for which I worked, returned from Italy the day after the arrests, he asked me to come to his Virginia home to relate to him what the case was about. After I finished, he shook his head, and said sadly, "The Republicans have really done it to themselves this time." Attorney General John Mitchell resigned soon thereafter as head of the Nixon re-election campaign and later as Attorney General. The Washington Post had been alerted within hours of the burglars' arrests by the arresting officer, Detective Carl Shoffler, who knew almost two weeks before the arrests of the burglars' plan to go back into the Democratic National Committee. Shoffler also, through wiretapping, knew there were higher-ups involved, not just the five burglars and Hunt and Liddy. Shoffler was one of the Washington Post's "deep throats." So in my opinion the dye was cast early on in the scandal that Nixon would not serve out his second term in office. Influential people in both parties realized this. What those who rejoiced in the downfall of Nixon did not realize was that he was the key person in holding back the takeover of the GOP by the extreme right wing of the party. With Nixon gone, Joseph Coors and his henchmen, Ed Feulner and Paul Weyrich, moved quickly in 1974 to lay the groundwork to capture the GOP. They have succeeded in doing so using the Heritage Foundation as a primary vehicle. With Nixon out of the political picture, the extremists, aided and abetted by sociopaths and opportunists, transformed the GOP into the nefarious entity that today is responsible primarily for most of the immense and seemingly insoluble problems that plague the nation (and the world).

From “A Scandal Revisited” by Frank Gannon, The Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2012, in a review of Thomas Mellon’s book, 'Watergate': “What emerges from ‘Watergate’ is an acute sense of how much we still don’t know about the events of June 17, 1972. Who ordered the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington? What was its real purpose? Was it purposely botched? How much was the CIA involved? Who erased the 18 1/2 minutes from Richard Nixon’s Oval Office tapes? How did a politician as tough and canny as Richard Nixon allow himself to be brought down by a ‘third-rate burglary’? “Your guess is as good as mine. Mr. Mellon’s guesses are sometimes over the top but never less than entertaining. ‘Watergate’ demonstrates show a novelist can peel back layers of personality and motivation that historians must leave undisturbed. It also shows Mr. Mallon at times intruding on events more than his long-ago essay on historical fiction would probably endorse.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2125086/Clint-Hill-memoir-Jackie-Kennedys-secret-service-agent-recounts-day-JFK-assassinated.html

News of the World closure triggers £244m write-off News Group Newspapers says charges arising from paper's shutdown could rise further By Mark Sweney guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 April 2012 08.35 EDT The closure of News of the World has so far triggered charges of almost £250m, with its publisher admitting that the final total could well be significantly more. News Group Newspapers, the parent company of the Sun and now-defunct News of the World, said that write-offs arising from paper's shutdown have hit £244m – but admitted that tens of millions in legal fees could just be the tip of the iceberg. NGN said that it has made a £160m non-cash write-off on the value of the "publishing rights" for News of the World, which was closed last July in response to the phone-hacking scandal, in its financial results for the year to 3 July. In addition, NGN has taken a £55.5m charge relating to redundancy and restructuring costs and legal fees, and after sign-off on the financial documents filed to Companies House on 30 March this year notched up another £5.1m. Costs for claimants' legal fees and damages as at 30 March this year hit £23.6m, with the company admitting that the final cost may or may not be significantly higher than the amounts stated. "The company is subject to several ongoing investigations initiated in 2011 by regulators and various governmental authorities after allegations of voicemail interception, inappropriate payments to public officials and other related matters," NGN said in a statement in the financial results. "The company is fully co-operating with these investigations, but is not able to estimate the ultimate outcome or cost associated with these investigations." NGN also reported that a 17% rise in operating profits before execeptional items in the year to 3 July to £103.6m. Revenues remained almost flat year on year at £654m. Most of the £244m in charges were incurred for the current financial year, because the News of the World shut on 10 July. However, the unit did take the exceptional charge of £23.7m in respect of hacking claimants' legal fees in the year, reducing reported operating profits to £81.7m. The publisher of the Sun and the News of the World said its editorial staff costs were £48.9m, down slightly year on year, with the average number of journalistic staff employed 575. Director remuneration rose 60% year on year from £3m to £4.8m, with compensation for "loss of office" to an unspecified individual or individuals totalling £1.2m. During the year NGN changed how it manages the licensing agreement for the publishing rights and titles for the Sun and the News of the World. The rights had existed in a separate subsidiary, News 2026, in an agreement that was supposed to exist from 1 July 2010 until 30 June 2022. However, less than a year into the deal on 10 June 2011 – a month before the decision to close NoW was taken as the phone-hacking scandal engulfed the company – NGN decided to repurchase the rights for the two newspapers at a cost of £720m. The closure of NoW led to a non-cash writedown in the value of the rights by £160m, which means that the notional value of the Sun is £560m. "As at the balance sheet date there is no indication of impairment and the directors feel that the valuation is appropriate," NGN said in the filing. "The directors believe that the publishing rights and titles have sufficiently well-established position in the marketplace to be defended against any threats arising from current competitors, potenital new entrants and potential technological changes in the industry. Any impairment results from specific events or circumstances and do not indicate that the inherent lives of the assets are anything other than indefinite."

Rupert Murdoch's American media immunity The paradox is how little interest, until now, the US press has taken in the scandals engulfing the tycoon's News Corp empire By Michael Wolff guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 April 2012 10.03 EDT Even as his British media empire seems close to collapse, Rupert Murdoch has seemed 'untouchable' in his adopted home of the United States. Last week, PBS aired a Frontline documentary, more then six months in the making, about Rupert Murdoch's phone-hacking scandal. The big budget film, hosted and reported by Lowell Bergman, one of the pre-eminent US investigative journalists, broke no news nor offered new perspectives about the affair. Rather, the show – the first US documentary to delve into the Murdoch scandals – gave a diligent, if somewhat flat-footed account of events that came to a head last summer, for an audience that, the producers seemed to assume, had missed most of the story. In the same week, the BBC and the Australian Financial Review, opened up an entirely new chapter in the ever-expanding chronicles of News Corporation's scandals: NDS, a News Corp subsidiary company that developed encryption technology for pay TV outlets, had allegedly mounted a long-term effort of piracy and hacking in an effort to undermine its competitors. News Corp's Australian arm has denied the allegations. Here's the thing: Murdoch's empire may be under siege in one of the most riveting business tales of our time – featuring wounded celebrities, a dynastic family drama, and toadying at the highest levels of government – but American journalism has been mostly absent from the story. At best, it has been a sidelined presence, late to the game, and generally confused about how to get ahead of events happening in another country. This is, arguably, the best thing Murdoch has going for him: in the US, the seat of his company and the main motor of his fortunes, he has been able to hide in plain sight. So, why the disconnect? In a universe of equal-access global information, how can such parallel worlds comfortably exist? In the world abroad, almost everything is coming apart for Murdoch: his top executives, including his son, face possible imprisonment, his businesses face dismemberment, his reputation is in ruins. In the world at home, he remains the largely untouchable chief executive of one of the most influential companies in the nation. Within the US business and journalistic community, there is no real sense that he is even vulnerable – precisely, or circularly, because it would require a US outcry to bring him down. And the business and journalistic communities, which would have to lead that outcry, haven't begun to stir. Many journalists, including Bergman, make the technical point that without an instance of phone-hacking on US soil, there is no smoking gun. Last summer, a spurious report in a second-tier British tabloid suggested that Murdoch reporters might have hacked the phones of 9/11 families, which would have provided an emotional gotcha. But without that, well … shrug. Still, while this lack of jurisdiction might change the legal direction of the story, it ought not to change the journalistic view. The UK evidence trail reaches ever-more perilously close to Murdoch, the big kahuna. And such pursuit of such a personality is the sport of journalists, isn't it? What's more, the constant revelations in the UK, and now Australia, reflect on the ethos of the whole company, most of which operates in the U.S.: News Corp. has built itself by an aggressiveness that defines its character and actions. The smoking guns seem limited only by one's imagination. And yet, nothing: not a single US news outlet has meaningful advanced the investigation of Murdoch and his company. The one significant contribution from the US media came more than 18 months ago when the New York Times ran a Sunday magazine piece about the scandal. The Times' attention furthered the story in Britain, and demonstrated the power of US media interest. But in fact, the Times mostly regurgitated what the Guardian had already reported. At one level, the conundrum for journalists is Murdoch himself. He lives here; he makes most of his money here; he is a business superstar here. But he has never cut the kind of figure – nor been the object of such obsession – that he has in Australian and the UK. In the US, he owns largely anodyne entertainment and sports assets, rather than newspapers (the obstreperous New York Post is a local extravagance, and the Wall Street Journal is his reach for respectability); the exception is Fox News, but Roger Ailes is correctly perceived as its mastermind, and Murdoch as its more remote proprietor. While Murdoch is a figure of respect and even awe in the media community, he has never much captured the interest of people outside it. Still, that ought to be a journalistic opportunity: to take the shadow figure and bring him into the light. But unless you are singularly committed, it is hard to take on power until its hold begins to loosen – and it hasn't, quite. At least not in the US. This may have been Murdoch's annus horribilis, but News Corp's share price has advanced by 30% over the year – the ultimate sign of public faith and corporate solidity. (For a business story of this complexity and magnitude, the logical outlet to cover it would have been the Wall Street Journal. Alas.) From a journalistic standpoint, it is hard, or ought to be hard, to ignore the sense of drip-drip inevitability. In London, there are three fronts: the original hacking charges at the News of the World; investigation of police bribery at the Sun; and possible charges of obstruction of justice (that is, the alleged cover-up). The latter most directly threatens Murdoch's son, James. Many of Murdoch's senior-most managers have been arrested – and not yet charged. While the lack of charges seems to be interpreted in the US as a signal of weakness in the allegations, it more likely reflects the process of British law: plea bargains occur before indictment. In other words, some of the arrested subjects are likely bargaining and getting ready to testify against each other and those above. If the dominoes begin to fall, that will increase pressure on the US Justice Department to act under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And now, with the NDS story, allegations of scandal reach by another vector into the uppermost levels of the company: anything to do with pay TV strikes close to Chase Carey, the chief operating officer, and presumed "Mr Clean" alternative to people named Murdoch. Of course, to truly report this story, you need sources inside the company at a high corporate level. It is a testament to the kind of aggressive loyalty that Murdoch has cultivated at News Corp (which has, arguably, been at the root of so much of the companies' feral behavior), that few American reporters have such sources. Omerta rules. And so the story has unfolded from the far ends of the empire, with the New York journalists working in close proximity to the company's center of power woefully out of the loop – though it is they who, if they wanted to, could buttonhole Murdoch on the pavement. Still. Hollywood seems suddenly roused. Judging from the shocked and outraged calls I've gotten in the days since Frontline acquainted PBS viewers with the basic details of this long-in-progress, slow-motion downfall of the most powerful man of our time, maybe, finally, the story has reached us. And is ripe. • This article will not be open for comments for legal reasons

April 3, 2012 James Murdoch Steps Down From British Broadcaster The New York Times By JOHN F. BURNS LONDON — BSkyB, the British satellite broadcaster partly owned by the News Corporation, said on Tuesday that James Murdoch had resigned as chairman to shield the company from the phone hacking scandal engulfing his family’s British newspaper group. BSkyB said Nicholas Ferguson, the deputy chairman, had been named to succeed him. Mr. Murdoch will continue to hold a seat on the board. But by relinquishing his position as the head of BSkyB, one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative television properties in the Murdoch stable, Mr. Murdoch, 39, appeared to be shedding one of the most important portfolios in the newly focused role assigned to him only weeks ago. At that time, the News Corporation announced his resignation from oversight of the company’s British newspapers and said he would concentrate on overseeing the company’s television operations outside the United States. Resigning Tuesday from what was his last major executive role in the British media, Mr. Murdoch — who has faced increasingly tough scrutiny of his handling of the hacking scandal at two tabloids — also appeared to step back from a career that had made him one of Britain’s most powerful media figures. “I am aware that my role as chairman could become a lightning rod for BSkyB, and I believe that my resignation will help to ensure that there is no false conflation with events at a separate organization,” Mr. Murdoch wrote in a letter to the BSkyB board. The letter appeared to acknowledge investor concerns that damage inflicted by the hacking scandal could eventually undermine the wider $50 billion Murdoch conglomerate. Among media commentators and market analysts on both sides of the Atlantic, Mr. Murdoch’s resignation renewed speculation that his longer-term prospects in the News Corporation — the company his father built and where he was considered the heir apparent — had plummeted. For months, independent shareholder groups have been calling for his resignation from both the BSkyB board and the board of the News Corporation, where the Murdoch family has relied on the power vested in it by the company’s dual-class voting structure to protect him. Some of those groups saw his BSkyB resignation as a signal to renew pressure for his removal from any executive responsibility at the News Corporation, where he remains a board member and deputy chief operating officer. “This ups the pressure on him to resign from News Corporation,” said Michael Pryce-Jones, a spokesman for CtW Investment Group, a shareholder activist group in Washington, who said discontented shareholders would not wait for the News Corporation’s next annual meeting in six months to renew their push for James Murdoch’s ouster. The BSkyB resignation, he said, might have had more credibility several months ago. A similar view was voiced by many analysts in Britain. Steve Hewlett, a media commentator for the BBC, said Mr. Murdoch’s quitting as head of Britain’s most powerful pay-TV company, a side of the News Corporation’s operations where he has built a formidable reputation for expanding operations and profits, signaled that his wider ambitions at the company were probably spent. “The prospect of his succeeding his father, you would have to say, are even less likely today than they were yesterday,” he said. But others saw such assessments as premature. Rupert Murdoch, 81, has already said his immediate successor as News Corporation chairman, if he were suddenly unable to continue in the post, would be Chase Carey, the company’s current president. That formulation has left open the possibility that a member of the Murdoch family — possibly another son, Lachlan, if not James — would ultimately take over. Analysts in Britain said they believed that the immediate trigger for James Murdoch’s resignation as the BSkyB chairman was linked to the expected release within weeks of a report on the phone hacking scandal by a House of Commons select committee. Based on the questioning during the hearings last year, it is thought likely that the report will be highly critical of Mr. Murdoch for what some committee members described as incomplete and misleading testimony. Through months of scrutiny, Mr. Murdoch has insisted that he was kept in the dark about the systematic wrongdoing at the tabloids, and has denied claims by other senior figures in the newspaper operation that they warned him of the breadth of the problem. Confronted with company e-mails that suggested that he knew more than he had acknowledged, he continued to deflect blame but apologized for not pressing his own inquiry sooner. His prospects of escaping the spotlight appear to be further diminished by the likelihood that both he and his father will be among the media proprietors who will be called within weeks to testify before a separate judge-led inquiry into the scandal and its ramifications. On top of this, Britain’s regulator for the communications industry, Ofcom, said last month that in light of the revelations of wrongdoing at the tabloids it was stepping up its investigation into whether BSkyB met the “fit and proper” person standard applied to the holders of broadcast licenses in Britain. Analysts have said that a ruling against BSkyB would be less likely if James Murdoch was no longer chairman. The News Corporation owns about 40 percent of BSkyB’s stock and had hoped to acquire more. But as the hacking scandal gripped the nation last July, the family bowed to pressure from leading politicians, including Prime Minister David Cameron, and announced that it was withdrawing a $12 billion bid to buy complete control of the broadcaster. The move was seen as a major setback to the Murdoch family’s ambitions to establish themselves as the most powerful force in global broadcasting. Last summer, BSkyB announced a pretax profit for 2010-2011 of $1.7 billion, up 16 percent from the previous year. As the News Corporation’s deputy chief operating officer, Mr. Murdoch still oversees lucrative international channels like Star TV in Asia, Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia. The company’s fast-growing Star India business also reports directly to him. Amy Chozick contributed reporting from New York, and Julia Werdigier and Alan Cowell from London. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: April 3, 2012 An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the Murdoch family, rather than News Corporation, owned 40 percent of BSkyB’s stock.

News Corp shareholders renew call for Rupert Murdoch to step downCalls for Murdoch to be replaced are reignited following James Murdoch's resignation from British pay-TV giant BSkyB By Dominic Rushe in New York guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 April 2012 11.47 EDT Shareholder activists have renewed their call for Rupert Murdoch to quit as chairman of News Corporation, as the company faces fresh turmoil with the resignation of his James Murdoch as chairman of its British pay-TV giant. Christian Brothers Investment Services (CBIS), which allied a massive vote against Rupert Murdoch, his sons and several of his appointed directors last year, calls for him to be replaced with an independent director. In last year's vote, James Murdoch emerged as the least popular director with shareholders: 67% of the votes not controlled by the Murdoch family went against him. This year's resolution, filed shortly before James Murdoch stepped down at BSkyB, says the phone-hacking scandal has placed News Corp in peril. It reads: "This pervasive and continuing scandal has led to an erosion of public confidence, helped to scuttle a critical business acquisition, and threatened the journalistic reputation and viability of News Corporation's UK publications. It also has made clear the need for independent board leadership to steer the company through a process of reform," says the resolution. Julie Tanner, assistant director at CBIS, said Rupert Murdoch had to take responsibility for News Corp's continuing woes following the hacking scandal at his UK newspapers that has led to dozens of arrests and the closure of the News of the World. "This is a situation that has to be dealt with from the top. This company has a long history of corporate governance concerns and it is no surprise that it has been unable to deal with this scandal as it has happened," she said. Tanner said James Murdoch's resignation at BSkyB, which is controlled by News Corp through its 39.1% stake, was not enough and that it was unacceptable that he was staying on as a nonexecutive director at the broadcaster. "He should be removed," she said. Rupert Murdoch and News Corp's chief operating officer Chase Carey issued a statement after James Murdoch's resignation in which they praised his work at BSkyB and said they looked forward to "James' continued substantial contributions at News Corporation." Michael Wolff, author of Murdoch biography The Man Who Owns The News, said there was now immense pressure on James to resign from News Corp. "But he hasn't shown much inclination to go," he said. "James is worried the company will sell him out. What's going on now is that James wants to stay out of jail." Father Seamus Finn, shareholder activist at Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, said shareholders were concerned by James Murdoch's ongoing problems and his recent resignations from board positions at Sotheby's, GlaxoSmithKline and now BSkyB. Finn clashed with Rupert Murdoch at last year's AGM. "You're suggesting I'm a very bad person," Murdoch told Finn when the investor quizzed him about the hacking scandal. "I can see that he wants to protect his son but this goes way beyond anything that shareholders can swallow," said Finn.

Rupert Murdoch and son James expected at Leveson inquirySun and ex-News of the World owners likely to be among newspaper proprietors called to give evidence over press ethics By Lisa O'Carroll guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 April 2012 13.01 EDT They are likely to be called to the Leveson inquiry alongside other newspaper owners, as well as Rebekah Brooks, David Cameron and Tony Blair. Photograph: PA Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch are expected to appear at the inquiry into press ethics within weeks after Lord Justice Leveson announced he would be calling in newspaper owners to give evidence between now and the middle of May. Lord Rothermere, owner of Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers, is also expected to be asked to testify under oath. So too is Eygeny Lebedev, the son of the Russian proprietor of the Evening Standard, Independent and the cut-price i. It is believed all three proprietors have been pencilled in for the week beginning 23 April. Aidan Barclay he son of media-shy Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, owners of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, is also to be called. The newspaper owners are expected to be grilled about their relationship with politicians including David Cameron and past prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, including details of their specific meetings, correspondence and telephone calls. Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, has been confirmed as a witness for the next module of the inquiry which is examining the relationships between the press and politicians. Tom Watson, the Labour MP who led the calls for an investigation into phone hacking, has applied to be a core particpant in the next stage of the inquiry as has Brooks and Evan Harris, the former Liberal Democrat MP who led the Hacked Off campaign for an inquiry into press standards last July. David Cameron, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown will also be called before Leveson, who is expected to discuss their relationship with the Murdochs, Rothermeres and Barclays in the runup to general elections. Leveson did not mention the Murdochs by name, however their appearance will generate worldwide interest. The last time Murdoch and his youngest son James appeared in front of British authorities was in July when they were summoned to answer questions at a parliamentary committee investigating phone hacking. In an extraordinary day of testimony, Rupert Murdoch declared it "the most humble day of my life" and told MPs how sorry they were to the victims of the News of the World phone hacking. Newspaper owners will give evidence over two weeks. "During the week commencing 23 April, I apprehend that we will be calling some proprietors or media owners and other evidence crossing modules," said Leveson. He said more proprietors would be summoned on the week commencing 8 May. That week Leveson will return to the Guardian's story last July about voicemail interceptions of the murdered teenager Milly Dowler that led to a public outrage over phone hacking which prompted the closure of the News of the World. The Guardian reported that the murdered school girl's phone had been hacked and her voicemails deleted by News of the World, giving rise to a "false hope" moment for her distraught parents. It has since emerged that the voicemails may have been deleted automatically by the telephone companies. Surrey Police are investigating the matter and told Leveson that it will submit its findings to the inquiry at the end of May. Leveson said on Tuesday that the time was coming to "simply draw a line" under the matter which he will return to on the week beginning 8 May.

Leveson inquiry: John Yates attented wedding of News of The World crime editor John Yates, the former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner, who resigned over criticism of his links with News International, attended the wedding of the News of the World’s ex-crime editor, the Leveson Inquiry heard yesterday. John Yates was so close with News of The World's Lucy Panton he even attended her wedding, the Leveson Inquiry heard The Telegraph By Martin Evans 2:23PM BST 03 Apr 2012 Lucy Paton said Mr Yates, who headed up Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit, was a “working friend” and one of a number of police officers at the wedding. The inquiry into press standards had previously heard how Miss Panton enjoyed a close working relationship with Mr Yates with the pair meeting regularly. At one stage she was told by her boss at the now defunct Sunday tabloid to “call in all those bottles of champagne” in order to get an “exclusive” story on an alleged terror plot. But Miss Panton told the inquiry that her relationship with the senior officer was entirely professional and dismissed the suggestion she had bought him champagne as “banter” from her office. Miss Panton, who married a Scotland Yard detective also denied the suggestion that Mr Yates’s attendance at her wedding was inappropriate. She said: “There were a few people at my wedding who I would class as working friends, who I didn't socialise with outside of work. "Mr Yates falls into that category. I certainly got on well with him. I had a good rapport with him. "But we didn't socialise outside of work. The wedding was the only occasion." Ms Panton added that Mr Yates attended the wedding of fellow crime reporter Jeff Edwards, who worked for the Daily Mirror from 1992 until he retired in 2008. She said the only time she had consumed champagne with Mr Yates had been in the company with other people such as at the Crime Reporters Association Christmas party and said her boss’s remark had been “banter with a little pressure”. She explained: "There were no bottles of champagne. I think he was putting pressure on me to get a story. I would call that banter. It's a way that people spoke to each other in our office." She added: "I think they hoped that we would be able to ring these people up and bring in exclusives every week. "The reality is they know that doesn't happen, unfortunately, otherwise we would have had bigger and better crime stories than we did. "My recollection of this is that I did phone Mr Yates, and I don't believe I actually got to speak to him. That was the reality, week in, week out." Asked about a dinner with assistant commissioner Andy Hayman in 2007 at which the officer bought a bottle of champagne, Miss Panton said she did not believe she had been present as she was still off on maternity leave. The inquiry previously heard evidence of how Miss Panton had filed a story from the office of Scotland Yard’s head of press, Dick Fedorcio using his computer and email account. She said she was under pressure to send her article to her news editors so it could be edited for that weekend's paper.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2124378/James-Murdoch-resigns-chairman-BSkyB-wake-phone-hacking-scandal.html

James Murdoch quits as BSkyB chairman James Murdoch has finally relented to shareholder pressure and quit as chairman of BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster. Pressure is increasing on James Murdoch and could lead the BSkyB board to reconsider its support for him. The Telegraph By Kamal Ahmed and Katherine Rushton 3:01PM BST 03 Apr 2012 In a letter to the board, he said he feared becoming a lightening rod for the pay-TV broadcaster, and that BSkyB risked being undermined by matters outside the scope of the company, referrin the phone hacking scandal at News Corporation. I believe that my resignation will help to ensure that there is no false conflation with events at a separate organisation, he said. Mr Murdoch will be replaced by BSkyBs deputy chairman, Nicholas Ferguson, but will retain a seat on the board as a non-executive director. In a statement, Mr Ferguson praised Mr Murdochs vision, drive and strategic insight and reiterated that the boards support for James and belief in his integrity remain strong. Mr Murdoch took the decision after speaking to close colleagues at BSkyB and News Corporation last week and over the weekend. He has decided to quit now ahead of what is likely to be a critical report by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee at the end of the month into allegations of phone hacking. The media select committee report is likely to raise fresh questions about Mr Murdochs role as chief executive of News International during the phone hacking scandal. He admitted he did not read an email from senior executives about the widespread nature of the allegations. It is believed that Mr Murdoch thought it is better to go now than being seen to be forced out by a critical report. He is also due to appear before the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics with his father, Rupert, at the end of the month. Any criticism is likely to increase the scope of an inquiry by Ofcom into whether Mr Murdoch is a fit and proper person to hold a licence for a television company. His resignation comes after growing pressure from shareholders. They are concerned that the phone hacking allegations at News International, where Mr Murdoch was formerly chief executive, are having a contagion effect on BSkyB. Mr Murdoch also faced conflict of interest issues after News Corporation, of which he is deputy chief operating officer, launched a bid to buy the proportion of BSkyB it does not already own. Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive on News Corp, and Chase Carey, NewCorp's chief operating officer, said in a statement: We are grateful for James Murdochs successful leadership of BSkyB. He has played a major role in propelling the company into the market-leading position it enjoys today and in the process has been instrumental in creating substantial value for News Corporation shareholders. "We look forward to BSkyBs continued growth under the leadership of Nicholas Ferguson and Jeremy Darroch and to James continued substantial contributions at News Corporation.

Watergate Reporting, the Second Draft The New York Times By BRIAN STELTER April 2, 2012 Rarely does reality intersect with role playing the way it did two Sundays ago in Bob Woodward’s living room. Meeting him there were Carl Bernstein, his writing partner at The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s; Ben Bradlee, their top editor at the time; and Robert Redford, the actor who played Mr. Woodward in “All the President’s Men,” the 1976 film that dramatized The Post’s presidential detective work. Jokes were cracked about the four decades that had passed since Watergate — “You guys, we’re really lucky we recognize each other,” Mr. Redford said — but the men were together for a serious reason. Mr. Redford was starting work on another project on Watergate, this time as a documentarian. Commissioned by the Discovery Channel, the project, “All the President’s Men Revisited,” will be a two-hour television documentary about the scandal that doomed Richard M. Nixon’s presidency and will explore its effects on politics and the media in the 40 years since. It will have its premiere in 2013 but will be announced by Discovery this week at its annual presentation for advertisers. “To be able to pull the fabricated and the real together, for the first time, is kind of a juicy opportunity for us,” Eileen O’Neill, the president of Discovery, said in an interview. Discovery’s interest speaks to the enduring news media fascination with the scandal, which seems to inspire a new television special every 5 to 10 years. Discovery’s previous effort, a collaboration with the BBC, was a five-part series in 1994. The fixation endures in part, said Stanley I. Kutler, a pre-eminent Watergate historian, because “of all the presidents in the last 50 years, it is Nixon that’s the most interesting.” For Mr. Redford the project represents the start of Sundance Productions, a new business that will make shows for television and the Web. His producing partner in the business will be Laura Michalchyshyn, a former executive at Discovery Communications and the Sundance Channel. Mr. Redford remains the creative head of that channel, but he sold his ownership stake in it four years ago; going forward, he said, his production company will be pitching shows to many channels. “Television is just booming,” said Mr. Redford, who had a few television roles in the early 1960s before shifting to film, his medium of choice since then. On Monday, on a break from post-production of “The Company You Keep,” a thriller he directed and starred in about former members of the Weather Underground, he sounded passionate in a phone interview about the Watergate documentary, which he will produce and narrate. Sometimes in life, he said, there’s reason not to look back, but as he talked through Watergate and its consequences in Mr. Woodward’s living room in Washington, he said, he felt increasingly confident that “it’s the right time to take a look at this moment in history to inform the present.” Mr. Woodward, in a separate interview, said that the men discussed: “What’s the legacy of Watergate? What do we understand? What are some of the lessons? It’s been a long time.” The answers not only change over time, but they also remain up for debate. One of Nixon’s wars, Mr. Woodward said, “is a war against history” — intentionally speaking in the present tense. He cited a book review in The Wall Street Journal two months ago by Frank Gannon, a former Nixon aide, who asserted that many questions about the scandal remain unresolved. “How did a politician as tough and canny as Richard Nixon allow himself to be brought down by a ‘third-rate burglary’?” Mr. Gannon wrote. “Your guess is as good as mine.” Mr. Woodward was having none of it. “The voluminous record shows that there are answers to some of those questions,” he said. “When I read the review, I thought, the war continues, and it should be met with facts.” He said he had guided Mr. Redford and the other executive producer of “All the President’s Men Revisited,” the media executive Andy Lack, to new material about the scandal, like information about the 2005 disclosure of Mark Felt, the onetime associate F.B.I. director, as the so-called Deep Throat source. The producers also plan to seek interviews with politicians and media leaders. Ms. Michalchyshyn called the documentary “a look back, but it’s very much a look forward as well” at changes in the journalism industry, in campaign finance regulations and in political discourse, among other subjects. The documentary comes as Discovery appears to be trying to out-history the History channel, a chief competitor, which has set ratings records with shows that stray far from the confines of history, like the reality show “Pawn Stars.” Ms. O’Neill, Discovery’s president, said she had directed the channel’s staff to “make sure that we’re delivering in the history space,” particularly in what she called “baby boomer history.” In the presentation to advertisers this week her channel will promote specials about Amelia Earhart, Area 51 and Osama bin Laden, as well as “The Gatekeepers,” a series about White House chiefs of staff — including Nixon’s. H. R. Haldeman died in 1993, and Alexander Haig died in 2010; in their place, the producers have interviewed Mr. Haldeman’s deputy, Lawrence Higby. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: April 3, 2012 An earlier version of this article misstated the year of Alexander Haig's death. It was 2010, not 2004.