Douglas Caddy

Leveson inquiry: Former NotW executive advised two top police officers on job applications Former News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis advised two Metropolitan Police Commissioners when they were applying for the top job, he said today. The Telegraph By Martin Evans 3:15PM BST 02 Apr 2012 Mr Wallis told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards that he had spoken to both John Stevens - later Lord Stevens - and Sir Paul Stephenson, when they were in the running to head up the country’s biggest force. He explained that he advised them on how best to approach the application and interview process from his experience as a senior tabloid executive who understood the worlds of media, politics and the police. Mr Wallis said he was introduced to Lord Stevens by Scotland Yard’s former head of public affairs, Dick Fedorcio, around 12 months before he was appointed Met Commissioner in January 2000 He told the inquiry: “I had quite strong views about what was happening at the Met. I cared about the Met a lot. Whoever succeeded Paul Condon was going to be a very important appointment for the Met. “I thought he was the best candidate of the other candidates I was aware of.” In a witness statement provided to the inquiry, he said: “Through my contact with him I became aware of his intention to apply for the position of Metropolitan Police Chief. This was a competitive process thus, there were a number of applicants from senior positions countrywide; these included, as he was at that time, lan Blair - the future Metropolitan Police Commissioner. “I advised Lord John Stevens throughout the application and interview process in which he was ultimately successful. “I recall having a number of discussions with him on the subject of his candidature. My input in this process was that he would be well advised to emphasise that he was a "coppers copper" or "thief taker" - in other words he was a man of action, rather that rhetoric.” Lord Stevens retired as Met Commissioner in 2005 and was later employed by the News of the World to produce a column entitled, The Chief, which was ghost written by Mr Wallis. Mr Wallis told the inquiry he had offered similar advice to Sir Paul Stephenson when he was applying to be Metropolitan Police Commissioner in 2009. Sir Paul stood down last July following an outcry over his close relationship with Mr Wallis and the Met’s decision to award him a £24,000 a year contract to provide PR to the force. Asked if he ever offered advice regarding his application for Met Commissioner, Me Wallis said: ” If we were together and the subject came up I would give him my view. I would have made it plain to him that I though John Stevens relationship and attitude towards the media were more successful than Ian Blair had been.” It is the second time Mr Wallis has given evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, first appearing in December. He has also been arrested by detectives investigating allegations of phone hacking at the News of the World. As well as Sir Paul Stephenson decision to step down, assistant commissioner John Yates and Mr Fedorcio also left their positions in the Met following criticism over their relationship with Mr Wallis. Mr Wallis was appointed deputy editor of the News of the World in 2003 and became the paper’s executive editor in 2008 before leaving in 2009. He was arrested last July by officers from Operation Weeting and was bailed to a future date.

Cash for access: Peter Cruddas 'bankrolled Chequers event' Peter Cruddas, the disgraced former Tory party treasurer, claimed to have direct access to Prime Minister David Cameron on at least 13 occasions – even bankrolling a dinner at Chequers, it was reported today. The Telegraph 8:49AM BST 01 Apr 2012 Mr Cruddas was forced to resign last week after he was secretly filmed by undercover reporters from The Sunday Times boasting that he could provide access to Mr Cameron and other ministers and influence over policy for "premier league" donors giving £250,000 to the party. In the wake of the disclosures the Conservatives released details of party donors attending dinners and lunches held at the Prime Minister's official residences at No 10 and Chequers. Today, The Sunday Times – publishing further details from its investigation – said that Mr Cruddas described having direct access to Mr Cameron on at least 13 occasions, including a dinner in London's Belgrave Square on the Prime Minister's birthday. He was also said to have claimed he served a "ruby murray" – curry – to Mr Cameron's wife, Samantha, when she was his dinner companion at a charity event at Chequers, which he sponsored. Although the event, on October 15 last year, was mentioned on the list released by the Conservatives, no reference was made to Mr Cruddas's involvement. In a statement, the Conservative Party said: "Over last weekend there was speculation about dinners in the Prime Minister's flat in Downing Street. "In response to this, the Conservative Party published details of occasions when significant donors had lunch or dinner in official residences used by the Prime Minister, ie Downing Street and Chequers. "The Conservative Party never claimed that it was publishing details of every occasion the Prime Minister had met with a donor and explicitly did not publish details of the Chequers charity opera event in aid of Mencap and other smaller charities. "This was attended by a large number of people, including donors to both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. It is a long-standing event, organised by a fund-raising committee and it raised £1 million for the charities." Shadow cabinet office minister Jon Trickett said Mr Cameron now needed to "comes clean" about the full scale of his meetings with wealthy Tory donors. "He needs to establish an independent inquiry immediately so people can have confidence that this matter will be resolved," he said. "This drip, drip of revelations cannot be allowed to continue. We need a full list of all donors met by David Cameron, not just those the Conservatives themselves class as 'significant'." Details of Mr Cruddas's involvement have emerged as David Cameron faces questions over meetings with a fund-raising group at Downing Street. The Prime Minister, the party's chairman Lord Feldman and another senior Tory met to discuss the leadership of the Conservative Foundation, which allows people to leave tax-free legacies to the party. The Downing Street gathering on January 11 last year has been revealed by Lord Hesketh, who was sacked as chairman of the foundation at the same meeting. "It was in a ground floor office," said the peer, who previously served as Conservative party treasurer and as a Tory minister in the 1980s and 1990s. A Conservative Party spokesman acknowledged the meeting had taken place, but denied that fund-raising had been discussed. The sole purpose of the meeting was to discuss Lord Hesketh's successor as chairman of the foundation, the spokesman said. "No meeting of the Conservative Foundation has ever been held at Downing Street," he said. "All board meeting of the foundation are held either in the private offices of board members or at Conservative Party Headquarters." A Tory source added: "This was not a meeting of the Conservative Foundation – it was a meeting to discuss Lord Hesketh's replacement." Nevertheless, the meeting could be judged as a breach of the Ministerial Code, which states: "Facilities provided to ministers at government expense to enable them to carry out their official duties should not be used for Party or constituency work." The Conservative Foundation was set up in 2005 and launched by Lady Thatcher and Sir John Major. The foundation's website describes it as "an integral part of the Conservative family".

James Murdoch 'on brink' over BSkyB chairmanship James Murdoch is on the brink of making what has been described as a “fine line” decision on his future as chairman of BSkyB. Pressure is increasing on James Murdoch and could lead the BSkyB board to reconsider its support for him. The Telegraph By Kamal Ahmed 9:30PM BST 31 Mar 2012 The former chief executive of News International is considering whether it would be better to resign now before a report by the Culture, Media and Sport select committee into the phone-hacking scandal at News International due at the end of the month. Although Mr Murdoch denies any wrong-doing, the committee is considering censuring him for failures to investigate fully allegations that accessing celebrities and others voicemail messages was widespread in the newspaper group. The issue over whether he will stand down is said to be “finely balanced”. It is also understood that Mr Murdoch and his father, Rupert, the chairman and chief operating officer of News Corporation, will give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics later this month. Both events could increase pressure on James Murdoch and could lead the board to reconsider its support for him. At present the board is still said to back Mr Murdoch but is aware that he may decide it is best to move on. If the Parliamentary committee finds against him, Ofcom, the media regulator is set to extend its inquiry into Mr Murdoch. It is considering whether he remains a “fit and proper person” to oversee a media organisation that holds a licence from the regulator. Ed Richard, the chief executive of Ofcom, now has a team of people looking at the issue although no decision has been made on any action it may take. Investors who are still backing Mr Murdoch fear that if he resigns after a critical committee report or a difficult appearance before the Leveson Inquiry his record at BSkyB could be tainted. If he goes more quickly, investors believe Mr Murdoch will have a chance to lay out his record at BSkyB which many in the City believe has performed well under his stewardship. One person with knowledge of the issue said that the decision was on a “fine line”. If he does resign, his position is likely to be filled by Nick Ferguson, the present senior independent director, as a stop-gap measure until a new replacement can be found. Mr Murdoch was formerly chief executive at BSkyB and oversaw a number of innovations including high-definition television and Sky+ and has seen the subscriber base increase by many millions of people. Over the last five years BSkyB’s share price has risen from 560p to close at 676p last Friday. If he does decide to resign investors believe he wants to be able to say his record was a good one. Mr Murdoch has faced harsh criticism for his role at News International after admitting that he did not read an email from senior executives saying that phone hacking at the organisation could be widespread. Alleged criminal activity at the organisation also appeared to be rife whilst he was CEO. Mr Murdoch has written to the committee saying that he did not mislead MPs. The report is due to be finalised after Parliament’s Easter recess. Last week News Corporation, of which Mr Murdoch is deputy chief operating officer, faced a series of allegations about its relationship with a set-top box security company called NDS. NDS has supplied BSkyB. NDS has faced accusations that it used its security knowledge of the pay-tv market to undermine rivals. It denies the claims.

Rupert Murdoch Fights Back Against 'Lies And Libels,' Declares War Posted: 03/29/2012 7:45 am Updated: 03/29/2012 9:43 am By Georgina Prodhan LONDON, March 29 (Reuters) - An angry Rupert Murdoch on Thursday declared war against "enemies" who have accused his pay-TV operation of sabotaging its rivals, denouncing them as "toffs and right wingers" stuck in the last century. Separate reports by the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Financial Review newspaper this week said that News Corp's pay-TV smartcard security unit, NDS, had promoted piracy attacks on rivals, including in the United States. NDS and News Corp had already denied the allegations, but on Thursday the media conglomerate mounted a concerted fight back as a corruption scandal that has plagued its British newspapers began to encroach on its far more lucrative pay-TV business. "Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels. So bad, easy to hit back hard, which preparing," News Corp Chief Executive Murdoch, 81, tweeted. News Corp, whose global media interests stretch from movies to newspapers that can make or break political careers, has endured an onslaught of negative press since a phone-hacking scandal at its News of the World tabloid blew up last year. At its height last July, Murdoch told British parliamentarians: "This is the humblest day of my life," after meeting the family of a murdered schoolgirl whose phone News of the World journalists had hacked. On Thursday, it appeared that Murdoch had had enough of apologising. "Enemies many different agendas, but worst old toffs and right wingers who still want last century's status quo with their monopolies," he tweeted. For an avowed republican such as Murdoch, describing someone as a rich and upper class "toff" is a damning insult. The BBC has a long history of ideological clashes with BSkyB, which is 39 percent owned by News Corp, and both Rupert and his son James Murdoch have publicly attacked the British public service broadcaster over the years. The Australian Financial Review is owned by Fairfax Media , the main rival to Murdoch's News Ltd newspaper group in Australia. "INACCURATE CLAIMS" James Murdoch sits on the board of NDS, which News Corp and co-owner private equity firm Permira agreed to sell for $5 billion to Cisco this month. He is also non-executive chairman and former CEO of BSkyB. The younger Murdoch has been criticised for not uncovering the scale of phone-hacking at the News of the World, though he had not yet joined the UK newspaper operation when the hacking took place. He has since moved to New York after being promoted within News Corp to deputy chief operating officer, and has severed all ties with the British newspapers. His focus is now the company's international pay-TV operations, where he made his career. Chase Carey, News Corp's COO and James Murdoch's immediate boss, issued a statement late on Wednesday in which he condemned both the BBC Panorama documentary and other media worldwide who had reported its claims. "The BBC's Panorama program was a gross misrepresentation of NDS's role as a high quality and leading provider of technology and services to the pay-TV industry, as are many of the other press accounts that have piled on - if not exaggerated - the BBC's inaccurate claims," he wrote. NDS has complained that it was not asked for its side of the story before Monday's Panorama, which claimed NDS had leaked secret codes that allowed rampant pirating of BSkyB rival ITV Digital, which went bust in 2002. On Thursday, NDS's Executive Chairman Abe Peled published a detailed letter to Panorama accusing the documentary of using manipulated emails to support its allegations, and demanding that the programme retract the claims. The BBC said: "We stand by the Panorama investigation. We have received NDS's correspondence and are aware of News Corp's rejection of Panorama's revelations. However, the emails shown in the programme were not manipulated, as NDS claims, and nothing in the correspondence undermines the evidence presented in the programme." Also this week, the Australian Financial Review published a story claiming that NDS had allowed piracy to thrive at its client U.S. satellite broadcaster DirecTV, which Murdoch had ambitions to buy, even though it had a fix. It reported that NDS ran a secret unit in the mid-1990s to sabotage its competitors. The stories were the result of a four-year investigation by investigative reporter Neil Chenoweth, who has written two books about Murdoch. The AFR's Editor-in-Chief Michael Stutchbury told Reuters on Thursday: "We fully stand by our reports in the paper and by Neil Chenoweth's extraordinary investigation." "We are not motivated in any way by any desire to damage any financial rival to the company that runs the Financial Review. We are simply following the story and publishing what we have uncovered," he said. None of the evidence presented by Panorama and the AFR this week suggests that the Murdochs or any other News Corp executives were aware at the alleged practices at NDS. NDS has won several court cases brought by rivals accusing it of promoting piracy, while others have been dropped - in one case because News Corp bought a subsidiary from the rival, Vivendi, which at the time was struggling with debt. News Corp made $3.8 billion in revenues and $232 million in operating profit from satellite TV in its last fiscal year. It does not detail financial results for its newspapers but its UK titles bring in less than 3 percent of group profit

Murdoch company in pay-TV piracy scandal 'paid Surrey Police' By Cahal Milmo The Independent Thursday 29 March 2012 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/murdoch-company-in-paytv-piracy-scandal-paid-surrey-police-7595084.html Related article • Investigator was paid £1m to snoop for Fleet Street • • • The News Corp subsidiary at the heart of claims it used computer hackers to crack rivals' technology made a £2,000 payment to a British police force for "assistance given to us in our work", The Independent can reveal. NDS, a London-based specialist in satellite television encryption technology, said yesterday that a payment made to Surrey Police in the summer of 2000 was a “charitable donation” for which it had received a written acknowledgement. But a cache of 14,000 internal emails belonging to the London-based company shows that its deputy head of security, Len Withall, asked for a cheque to be drawn for £2,000 as payment for “some work” he had been doing with the force over the previous six months. Mr Withall, who was a former detective chief inspector with Surrey Police before joining NDS in the early 1990s, asked for the payment to be made from a special budget “set aside to Police/Informants for assistance given to us in our work”. Surrey Police, which was rocked last year by revelations linked to the News of the World’s hacking of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s mobile phone, said it could not find a record of the payment on its accounting records but was conducting further investigations. Payments to police by private companies are not illegal and are made frequently for events such as the policing of a football match. But the revelation that a corner of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire was seeking to pay a British police force for unspecified work will fuel the controversy surrounding allegations that NDS supplied the encryption codes of rival companies to hackers in several countries, including Britain, who then created pirated “smart cards” for sale on the black market. NDS, which is being sold to computing giant Cisco for a $5bn in a deal which is expected to net News Corp $1bn, has issued a comprehensive statement strongly denying that it promoted piracy or provided any codes to hackers, saying it was in contact with them only to gather intelligence on their activities and assist law enforcement bodies. It has successfully defended four claims from rivals complaining their business was damaged by its activities. The NDS email cache, published yesterday in Australia by the Australian Financial Review, suggests that the company was also prepared to pay police in return for their assistance. The payment was first identified by the BBC’s Panorama but it was not included in this week’s programme outlining allegations about the activities of NDS in Britain after Surrey Police failed to confirm it. In a message written at 9.27am on 9 June 2000 with the subject title “Cheque for Police”, Mr Withall outlined the reasons for the payment, mentioning that it would need to be authorised by his superior, Ray Adams, a former commander in the Metropolitan Police and its one-time head of criminal intelligence. Mr Withall wrote: “Over the last six months, I have been doing some work with the Surrey Police. In our budget under code 880110 there is an amount set aside for payment to Police/Informants for assistance given to us in our work. With Ray’s authority, could you please make out a cheque in the sum of £2,000 payable to the Surrey Police and forward it to my office.” The Australian Financial Review, which yesterday produced a fresh barrage of allegations about the business activities of NDS in Australia, said it had received a demand from London law firm Allen & Overy on behalf of the company asking for the email cache to be removed because it contained confidential details about NDS staff. When The Independent yesterday approached NDS asking about the nature of a payment made to Surrey Police, the company said in a statement: “This was a one-off charitable donation of £2000 to Surrey police in August 2000. NDS’ support and donation was acknowledged with a thank you from Surrey Police.” After being provided with details of Mr Withall’s email, the company said: “Thank you for pointing out the copy of the email from the 9th June 2000 that highlighted a request made by the appropriate channels to our finance department. The payment was a charitable donation and we have a letter of thanks from Surrey Police to confirm that.” Mr Withall did not respond to a request last night to comment on his email. In a statement Surrey Police said: “Surrey Police has been made aware of an apparent payment of £2,000 made by NDS to the Force in August 2000. We are currently making further enquiries regarding this matter.” Under so-called “private hire” rules, police forces can be requested to provide officers for duties such as the policing of large public events such as sports matches or music festivals. Such arrangements are governed by strict rules of transparency and it would be unusual for a company to have to pay officers carrying out law enforcement work. The requested payment to Surrey Police by NDS, whose global headquarters is located in Staines, a part of west London which falls under the responsibility of the Surrey force, is part of a pattern of links between the company and law enforcement bodies around the world which have proved a valuable recruiting ground for the News Corp subsidiary. As well as recruiting former British police officers, the company has employed former members of the Israeli security services, including the former deputy head of the Shin Bet domestic security service, and an American Army intelligence officer. In separate development, the Australian Federal Police also revealed yesterday that it was assisting Scotland Yard with its inquries following a referral “in relation to News Corp” received at the height of the News of the World phone hacking scandal last summer.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/mar/28/murdoch-news-international-graphic

News Corp faces new rash of hacking allegations on a global scaleMurdoch's media empire denies fresh wave of claims that his firms undermined rivals through code cracking and piracy By Ed Pilkington in New York guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 March 2012 11.00 EDT Rupert Murdoch's troubles over the ongoing phone hacking scandal have become the subject of a renewed flurry of media attention this week, with broadcasters and websites across the world releasing the results of months of investigative digging. What's striking about this week's rash of material is its truly global nature. What began as a largely internal UK affair has now spread its tentacles across national US television, prompted forensic delving into a News Corp company with roots in Israel, and inspired probing questions about some of Murdoch's Australian holdings. Here's a guide to what's being claimed – and the News Corp responses. PBS Frontline Murdoch's Scandal, the PBS documentary aired in the US on Tuesday and in the UK on Wednesday, is significant not so much for what it says as where it says it. America is Murdoch's adopted home; it is where his empire is headquartered in an imposing skyscraper on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan; and it is where he planned to lay his legacy. So when 50 minutes of prime time television are set aside to unpick the influence of the Murdoch school of media ownership in forensic and critical detail, that is felt at the very core. The film looks back on the cosy relationship between Murdoch and a succession of British prime ministers, starting with Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Former Tory cabinet minister Norman Fowler recalls that Thatcher once berated someone critical of the media tycoon, saying "Why are you being so nasty about Rupert Murdoch, he's going to win the election for us." You can't accuse Murdoch of limiting his political influences to one party. His relationship with Tony Blair, Thatcher's Labour successor, was equally fruitful: Murdoch's papers swung behind Blair in his bid for power, and once in Downing Street, the victor relaxed media laws which allowed Murdoch to gain a greater stake of BskyB. John Prescott, the former Labour deputy leader, tells Frontline's Lowell Bergman: "Tony always took the view that it's better to fight an election with the media on your side, and I can understand the argument. But you pay one hell of a price on it. [Murdoch] buys influence, doesn't he?" BBC Panorama If Frontline gives a wide-angled narrative of the phone hacking scandal and Murdoch's political influences, the BBC's Panorama in the UK has gone for a much more tightly focused take on the alleged wrongdoings of his empire. On Monday night in the UK it broadcast a 30-minute investigation of NDS, a News Corp company that produced the smartcards used to manage the subscriptions of digital TV customers. NDS – which was sold only last week by News Corp and its investment partner – has been the subject of repeated allegations that it engaged in computer hacking to undermine ONdigital, a provider of digital channels in Britain that stood as a rival to Sky TV, the jewel in Murdoch's British media crown. NDS has always denied any allegations of illegality and none has ever been upheld in court. The company brought one legal challenge to an end with a deal that included an investment in the company that filed the complaint, and another, in the US, scored a pretty comprehensive victory. Panorama propelled the story to another level entirely, by tracking down a computer hacker called Lee Gibling. The documentary, which is currently unavailable for viewing in the US, records Gibling saying that he was paid up to £60,000 a year by NDS's security department to run a TV piracy website called The House of Ill Compute, or THOIC. Based on Gibling's testimony, as well as apparently incriminating emails obtained by the programme-makers, Panorama alleged that NDS in effect operated the THOIC website, through its UK security chief, a former police officer called Ray Adams. The programme alleged that the site was used to disseminate the codes to ONdigital's smartcards, cracked with the help of a German super-hacker called Oliver Kommerling. (Adams denies that he acted illegally.) BBC Panorama alleged this allowed thousands of hackers to make their own pirated smartcards, giving them access to the company's TV channels without paying a penny – contributing to the collapse of the fledgling business. Simon Dore, formerly chief technical officer for ONdigital (by then rebranded as ITV Digital), told Panorama: "The real killer, the hole beneath the waterline, was the piracy – we couldn't recover from that." Obtaining the codes to rival smartcards is not illegal in itself. Indeed, NDS admits being involved with THOIC, but says that it used the website to get information on and combat the trade in smartcard piracy. It maintains that it did not do anything illegal. NDS and News Corp deny they have ever condoned or facilitated smartcard hacking or the dissemination of pirated cards. In a response to the programme's allegations, published before it was broadcast, NDS said: "It is simply not true that NDS used the THOIC website to sabotage the commercial interests of ONdigital/ITV digital or indeed any rival." Instead, NDS said that it paid Gibling as part of a plan to entrap hackers. It said: "NDS paid Lee Gibling for his expertise so information from THOIC could be used to trap and catch hackers and pirates." It said that it had obtained ONdigital's codes for a legitimate reason, "as part of the fight against pay-TV piracy". Secretly filmed by the BBC, Adams also denied any illegality. He told Panorama that if he had known that Gibling was involved in spreading the ONdigital code around the internet, as claimed, he would have arrested him. Murdoch's son James was a non-executive director of NDS at the time of the hacking saga, though the BBC says there is no evidence he knew of any of the alleged events. NDS points out that, in the only battle to come to court, it won. "These allegations were the subject of a long-running court case in the United States. This concluded with NDS being totally vindicated and its accuser having to pay almost $19m in costs – a point that the BBC neglected to include." You can read the full statement here. In response to Panorama, News Corp said it was "proud to have worked with NDS" and to have "supported them in their aggressive fight against piracy and copyright infringement". It noted: "NDS has consistently denied any wrongdoing to Panorama and we fully accept their assurances. " The Financial Review, Australia From the US, to the UK, Israel and now Australia. As Panorama was broadcasting its expose, the Australian publication Financial Review was preparing to post the results of a lengthy investigation into News Corp's activities in the country of Murdoch's birth. The paper published a document cloud containing what it claims are 14,400 leaked emails said to have been from the hard drive of Ray Adams. It has also published its top samples of the cache as a download. The Financial Review's investigative media reporter Neil Chenoweth has been working on the story for the past four years and his article contains a mass of detail that goes well beyond even the forensic efforts of Panorama, for which he acted as a consultant. Casual readers be warned: this is serious, PHD-level stuff. Chenoweth, who is writing a book titled Murdoch's Spies, alleges that NDS carried out similar hacking attacks on Australian digital TV rivals as Panorama claimed it made against ONdigital in the UK. The Financial Review article claims that the firm used piracy of smartcard codes to undermine pay TV competitors Austar, Optus and Foxtel in a move it's claimed that cost them up to $50m a year in lost income. News Corporation has yet to make a detailed statement on the Financial Review's allegations but it repeated that its involvement with NDS was above board. It said: "News Corporation is proud to have worked with NDS, whose industry-leading technology transformed TV viewing for millions of people across the world, and to have supported them in their aggressive fight against piracy and copyright infringement."

Murdoch’s News Ltd. Rejects TV Piracy Claim in Australia The New York Times By MATT SIEGEL March 28, 2012 SYDNEY — Rupert Murdoch’s embattled media empire found itself facing fresh controversy on Wednesday, after an Australian newspaper published an investigative report alleging that News Corporation had engaged a special unit in the mid-1990s to sabotage its competitors, leading the Australian government to call for a criminal investigation into the claims. But News Ltd., the company’s Australian media wing, dismissed the report as “laughable,” saying that it was filled with inaccuracies and baseless claims that had been dismissed by courts in other countries, including the United States. The newspaper, The Australian Financial Review, which is owned by one of Mr. Murdoch’s main Australian rivals, Fairfax Media, published more than 14,000 internal e-mails from a former News Corporation subsidiary along with the results of what it said was a four-year investigation into whether that company, NDS Group, encouraged the mass pirating of rival satellite television networks. “These are serious allegations, and any allegations of criminal activity should be referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) for investigation,” Suzie Brady, a spokeswoman for the communications minister, Stephen Conroy, said in an e-mail exchange. A spokeswoman for the police said that the agency had not yet received a request from the authorities to investigate the accusations in the report, which centered largely on the battle for dominance over Australia’s burgeoning pay TV market in the late 1990s but also touched on the company’s operations in Europe and the United States. The report states that Australia had no effective laws against pay TV piracy at the time, so the actions inside the country would not have been illegal at the time. The report came a day after a BBC documentary made similar accusations against NDS Group in Britain, saying that it had paid a consultant to “crack” and publish on a pirate Web site the smart-card codes of a pay service that was started by ITV, the country’s free broadcaster. News Corporation has denied the claims made in the BBC program, “Panorama.” The new e-mails, which the newspaper said had come from the hard drive of Ray Adams, a former commander in the Metropolitan Police in London who served as head of operational security for NDS Group in Europe from 1996 to 2002, appeared to show that a secret unit within the company called “Operational Security” promoted a wave of high-tech piracy that damaged the News Corporation rivals Austar and Optus at a time when the company was positioning itself to be the dominant player in the Australian pay TV industry. The e-mails also supported the claims made in the BBC program, the report said. The report said that the e-mails provided evidence that the unit, which is led by Reuven Hasak, a former deputy director of Israel’s domestic secret service, Shin Bet, encouraged and facilitated piracy by hackers of companies for whom NDS provided pay TV smart cards, which allow subscribers to receive encoded satellite transmissions. The report said that the piracy cost the Australian companies as much as $52 million a year and helped to severely damage the television provider Austar, which Foxtel is now in the process of acquiring for nearly $2 billion in a deal that would cement the company’s hold over the country’s pay TV market. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is reviewing that deal. News Corporation, which has been roiled by accusations of phone hacking at its British newspapers, including the now-defunct News of the World, hit back at the report in a statement by its Australian wing. “The story is full of factual inaccuracies, flawed references, fanciful conclusions and baseless accusations which have been disproved in overseas courts,” News Ltd. said in a statement.

Australian minister demands police investigate News Corp 'sabotage unit' Australia's minister for communications has called for a police investigation into Rupert Murdoch's News Corp after an Australian newspaper released 14,400 emails purportedly showing the company engaged a secret unit in the mid-1990s to sabotage its competitors. The Telegraph By Kevin Lamarque and Jonathan Pearlman in Sydney 1:19PM BST 28 Mar 2012 The emails, part of a four-year investigation by the Australian Financial Review newspaper, suggest News engaged in corporate hacking and high-tech piracy against its Australian pay television competitors. The practice reportedly cost the company's rivals $AUS50 million a year and helped to put at least one of them out of business. The newspaper, owned by a rival media company, Fairfax Media, reported that News Corp had set up a covert unit known as Operational Security and employed former British and Israeli police and intelligence officers to use hackers to pirate the smart cards of rival pay TV operators. The allegations follow claims by BBC's Panorama that the company engaged in similar conduct to undermine BSkyB's competition. The stash of emails came from the hard drive of a former Metropolitan police commander in London, Ray Adams, who was head of security in Europe at NDS, a former News Corp subsidiary. They show NDS operatives engaging in a range of illegal practices including sabotaging rivals, unlawfully obtaining telephone records and fabricating legal actions. News Limited, the Australian arm of News Corp, today dismissed the allegations. "The story is full of factual inaccuracies, flawed references, fanciful conclusions and baseless accusations which have been disproved in overseas courts," it said in a statement. "News Limited and Foxtel [a pay-television company part-owned by News Corp] have spent considerable resources fighting piracy in Australia. It is ironic and deeply frustrating that we should be drawn into a story concerning the facilitation of piracy." But several ministers in the Gillard Government, which believes it has been unfairly targeted by the Murdoch stable in Australia, expressed concerns about the allegations. "These are serious allegations, and any allegations of criminal activity should be referred to the Australian Federal Police for investigation," said a spokesperson for Stephen Conroy, the minister. Wayne Swan, the treasurer, said: "I've seen the story, I'm not sure how accurate it is. Obviously it's concerning. we'll see how it plays out." IThe report said Operational Security was headed by Reuven Hasak, a former deputy director of the Israeli domestic secret service, Shin Bet, and was closely supervised by Mr Murdoch. Initially the unit aimed to hunt the pirates targeting News Corp's operations but it later began encouraging piracy and the publication of hacked software on the internet. In one email exchange, Andy Coulthurst, a British hacker working for Operational Security, emailed an NDS official: "The hack on Irdeto is SO EASY! All you need is . . ." before rattling off the details. "Andy this is great stuff," replied Avigail Gutman, who headed Operational Security for Asia Pacific from Taiwan, where her husband was the Israeli consul

FBI 'missed chance to uncover 9/11 plot’ US intelligence agencies used “closed” court hearings to suppress information about how a row between the CIA and FBI could have prevented them from uncovering the 9/11 terrorist plot, the House of Commons has heard. Two British businessmen returned to the UK and began a High Court action over their dispute. According to Mr Davis, the US court order prevented them discussing some details of their dispute in the London court. The Telegraph By James Kirkup, Deputy Political Editor 6:20AM BST 28 Mar 2012 David Davis, the former Conservative shadow home secretary, disclosed details of the “extraordinary” case to illustrate why the Coalition should abandon plans to allow similar secret hearings for intelligence cases to be held in British courts. He said that the American authorities had “sealed” a case in a US court relating to a dispute between two British businessmen and an Afghan billionaire over the setting up of a mobile phone network in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. Lord Michael Cecil, a British aristocrat, and his business partner, Stuart Bentham, claimed they were cheated out of shares in the mobile phone firm by Ehsan Bayat. According to reports, US intelligence agencies had privately backed the venture, hoping to be able to monitor calls made over the new network. Mr Bayat was an FBI informer, Mr Davis said. Progress on the network was slowed by “bickering” between the FBI and the CIA, meaning that it was not fully operational until 2002, the year after the al-Qaeda attacks on Washington and New York. “We cannot say for certain that if US intelligence agencies had tapped the Afghan phone network sooner, we would have intercepted evidence in time to stop the 9/11 attacks. But it seems likely,” Mr Davis said. “It looks like a huge opportunity was missed.” The businessmen’s dispute was heard in a New York court. In November 2003, Mr Davis said, an American judge sealed the case under national security laws after a request by the US Justice Department. “The US intelligence agencies feared the consequences if the truth about their infighting emerged, and they were determined to stop this happening,” he said. In 2009, the two British businessmen returned to the UK and began a High Court action over their dispute. According to Mr Davis, the US court order prevented them discussing some details of their dispute in the London court. The MP said that the case illustrated the danger of Coalition plans to hold “closed-material procedures” where judges would hear national security cases in secret. Jeremy Browne, a Foreign Office minister, insisted that the Government’s plans would not lead to situations like the one Mr Davis described. “This is not about covering up embarrassments. It is about putting more information before the courts than is currently possible,” he said.

Cash for access: David Cameron facing questions over donations from firm owned by Palestinian billionaire David Cameron faced fresh questions about political donations last night after it emerged that a British subsidiary of a company owned by a Palestinian billionaire had given £173,500 to the Conservative Party. The Telegraph By Cal Flyn and Gordon Rayner 10:00PM BST 27 Mar 2012 Between Oct 2009 and May last year the Tories accepted five separate donations from CC Property, whose sole income is from rent paid to it by another Tory donor, Consolidated Contractors International (UK). Both companies are owned by Said Khoury, a construction magnate based in Athens. A director of the companies disclosed yesterday that he had met David Cameron, while another director is a close friend of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son and one-time heir Saif al-Islam. Electoral law states that political parties can only be funded by people registered to vote in this country, or by British companies. Jack Straw, the former home secretary, has written to the Electoral Commission calling for an investigation into allegations that the Conservative Party is prepared to accept donations from companies based overseas. How should political parties be funded? Taxpayers should fund all parties Private funding should be capped at £10,000 and state funding increased Private funding should be capped at £50,000 Private donations should not be capped but should all be declared Parties should be forced to check the eligibility of donors contributing more than £500 and should have to declare loans above £1,500 VoteView Results It comes after a newspaper sting at the weekend showed Peter Cruddas, the Tory party co-treasurer, who has since resigned, encouraging potential foreign donors to "set up a company, employ some people to work here" as a way to circumvent those rules. Mr Straw said "The principle is very clear and in addition to this, new laws I introduced in 2009 ensured that you can't use front organisations to disguise the original source of the donation." Mr Khoury, who is worth an estimated £4 billion, is the ultimate owner of CC Property Company and Consolidated Contractors International (UK). CCI (UK) is also a Tory donor, having given £8,500 in August last year. Antoine Mattar, a British accountant, is a director of both UK companies. He told The Daily Telegraph he had been introduced to David Cameron, but it was at a party “for four or five hundred people” at The Carlton Club in London, an elite gentlemen’s club for Conservative supporters. He denied that the company was created to funnel foreign money into the Tory party or that Mr Khoury gained access to Conservative ministers. He said: "We have the same philosophy as [the Conservative Party]. We don't ask for anything in return." He said Mr Khoury had never met Mr Cameron, "and if you asked him, he wouldn't know who the [british] prime minister is”. Mr Mattar admitted that CC Property’s only income came from CCI (UK), the British arm of Mr Khoury’s construction group, which shares the same Knightsbridge address. But he insisted: “The money is not coming in from overseas – the money that comes out from our company here is nothing to do with who the ultimate owner is.” Asked if CC Property had any other activities than renting space to CCI, he said: “We’re in the process of buying other property.” Another director of both companies is Marwan Salloum, a Lebanese solicitor who was photographed on holiday with Saif Gaddafi in 2010, before the Libyan uprising. He was photographed sailing on a yacht off the Brazilian coast with Gaddafi and several bikini-clad women. As well as donating money to the Conservative Party, CC Property gave £17,076 to the Conservative Middle East Council last October. Meanwhile CCI (UK) actively lobbies MPs and has flown MPs from both main parties to countries where it has commercial interests. Bob Spink, the former Tory and UKIP MP, took three trips to Kazakhstan, between 2002 and 2004, partly funded by Consolidated Contractors International, which donated £3,000 towards his travel costs. John Mann, Labour MP and Secretary of British Kazakhstan All-Party Parliamentary Group, joined Mr Spink on the two of those visits and Linda Gilroy, former Labour MP, also went on two of the same trips. Both Fraser Kemp, the former Labour MP and Tim Loughton, a Tory, were given flights worth £1408 to and from Tajikistan in 2009. All of the donations and foreign trips were cleared by the Electoral Commission, which polices political donations. Michael Dugher, the shadow minister without portfolio, said: “Day by day the questions for David Cameron over cash for access seem to be mounting.” A Conservative party spokesman said “All donations to the Conservative Party comply fully with Electoral Commission rules. There is no question of individuals either influencing policy or gaining an unfair advantage by virtue of their financial contributions to the Conservative Party."

A terrific program well worth viewing: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/murdochs-scandal/

US acted to conceal evidence of intelligence failure before 9/11 Operation Foxden, delayed by turf war between the FBI and the CIA, given green light three days before the al-Qaida attacks By Ian Cobain guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 March 2012 15.26 EDT http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/27/us-intelligence-failure-911-fbi-cia The US government shut down a series of court cases arising from a multimillion pound business dispute in order to conceal evidence of a damning intelligence failure shortly before the 9/11 attacks, MPs were told. Moreover, the UK government is now seeking similar powers that could be used to prevent evidence of illegal acts and embarrassing failures from emerging in court, David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, told the Commons. The Justice and Security green paper being put forward by Ken Clarke's justice ministry has already faced widespread criticism from civil rights groups, media representatives and lawyers working within the secret tribunal system that hears terrorism-related immigration cases. Davis demanded to know how its proposals could be prevented from being used to cover up crimes and errors. "In light of previous revelations about the UK government's complicity in torture and rendition of detainees to locations like of Libya, Afghanistan, or illegally into American hands … how will the Government prevent the Justice and Security green paper proposals being misused in a similar way to cover up illegal acts and embarrassments rather than protect national security?" Davis said that in 1998 the FBI seized upon an opportunity to eavesdrop on every landline and telephone call into and out of Afghanistan in a bid to build intelligence on the Taliban. The Bureau discovered that the Taliban regime had awarded a major telephone network contract to a joint US-UK venture, run by an American entrepreneur, Ehsanollah Bayat and two British businessmen, Stuart Bentham and Lord Michael Cecil. "The plan was simple" Davis said. "Because the Taliban wanted American equipment for their new phone network, this would allow the FBI and NSA, the National Security Agency, to build extra circuits into all the equipment before it was flown out to Afghanistan for use. Once installed, these extra circuits would allow the FBI and NSA to record or listen live to every single landline and mobile phone call in Afghanistan. The FBI would know the time the call was made and its duration. They would know the caller's name, the number dialled, and even the caller's PIN." But the plan, Operation Foxden, was delayed by a turf war, during which "the FBI and the CIA spent more than a year fighting over who should be in charge", he said. The operation was eventually given the green light on 8 September 2001 - three days before the al-Qaida attacks. "A huge opportunity was missed," Davis said. He added that when Bentham and Cecil sued Bayat in the New York courts, and Bayat lodged a legal claim against the two Britons, the case was struck out and all records removed from the courts public database on the grounds of State Secrets Privilege, a legal doctrine that permits the US government to shut down litigation on the grounds of national security. The Britons attempted to sue in London, Davis said, but the case failed because "so long is the reach of the American State Secrets Privilege" that they were prevented from discussing key details of the US case. "Through heavy-handed use of State Secrets Privilege, US agencies can dictate what British judges in British courts are entitled to know, and how much British citizens in British courts are entitled to say," Davis told MPs. "What chance did Bentham and Cecil, or anyone else in a similar position, have of getting a fair hearing when American intelligence agencies can shut down cases without explanation in the US, and use State Secrets Privilege to control what evidence courts can see in the UK?" Davis said that when he talked about this episode with "someone in the know in one of the agencies involved" he was told: "Ten years have passed, and the culpable people have retired or moved on, so it's no longer embarrassing." Davis said the British green paper proposals are "more Draconian than State Secrets Privilege", and added: "Giving a government agency an absolute right to secrecy encourages bad behaviour. "This is the same State Secrets Privilege, and same American government, that the British green paper on Justice and Security is designed to protect," Davis said, adding that the case demonstrates "how intelligence agencies misuse these laws, not to protect our security, but to avoid their own embarrassment and cover up criminal activity." Bayat has previously denied that he or any of his companies acted unlawfully and said that they have never acted as "an agent, informant or spy". He could not immediately be contacted to comment on Davis' speech. The foreign officer minister Jeremy Browne told MPs: "The green paper proposals will enable better scrutiny [of government], which is a vital element in a healthy democracy." He added that proposals are "not about covering up embarrassment, it is about enabling the work of the courts". Reprieve's Executive Director, Clare Algar, director of the legal charity Reprieve, said: "This demonstrates just how ready the intelligence services are to cry national security in order to cover up their own embarrassment. It is yet another compelling example - if one were needed - of why we cannot let the UK Government's plans for secret justice go ahead."

Henry S. Ruth, Who Helped Lead Watergate Prosecution, Dies at 80 The New York Times By DOUGLAS MARTIN March 27, 2012 Henry S. Ruth Jr., who helped lead the criminal prosecution of Nixon administration officials involved in covering up the Watergate break-in and kept it on track when President Richard M. Nixon fired the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, died on March 16 in Tucson. He was 80. The cause was a stroke, his wife, Deborah Mathieu, said. Mr. Ruth had broad experience in criminal law when he became Mr. Coxs chief deputy shortly after Mr. Coxs appointment as special prosecutor in May 1973. Five months later, on Oct. 20, President Nixon ordered Mr. Coxs dismissal after he refused to drop his plan to subpoena tapes of the presidents conversations in the Oval Office. The firing prompted the two top Justice Department officials, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, to quit in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. The case concerned the possible involvement of Nixon and his aides in covering up the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex by burglars who turned out to have ties to Nixons re-election campaign. A Nixon aide, Alexander P. Butterfield, had revealed the existence of the secret tapes to a Senate investigative committee in July 1973. In the upheaval that followed Mr. Coxs dismissal when it was not known whether the special prosecutors office would continue and, if it did, what powers it might have Mr. Ruth was credited with holding the office together. He gathered the distraught staff around him and persuaded them to stay on and preserve the evidence, The New York Times reported. On Nov. 1, Leon Jaworski, a prominent lawyer from Texas, became special prosecutor. Asking Mr. Ruth to remain as his deputy was his first piece of business, Mr. Jaworski wrote in The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate (1976). He is a slender, mild-mannered man, so unassuming that some people, on first meeting, were inclined to misjudge his talents, Mr. Jaworski wrote of Mr. Ruth. In The Final Days (1976), Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote that Mr. Ruth had met privately with Leonard Garment, Nixons special counsel, to ask if Mr. Garment could persuade the president to resign. Mr. Garment said he had already tried and failed. Under Mr. Jaworski, the prosecutors persuaded the Supreme Court to order that the tapes be turned over to prosecutors, and the top Nixon aides H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson and John N. Mitchell, the former attorney general, were either convicted or pleaded guilty. As evidence mounted and the House of Representatives prepared articles of impeachment against the president, Nixon resigned on Aug. 8, 1974. President Gerald R. Ford issued a blanket pardon of Nixon the next month. When Mr. Jaworski stepped down two months later, he urged that Mr. Ruth replace him. Mr. Ruths first act was to challenge part of the pardon deal that restricted his access to tapes. He won: the special prosecutor was given full access. Mr. Ruth was special prosecutor until October 1975, when he issued a 277-page report on the Watergate investigation. It said prosecutors had thus far convicted or obtained guilty pleas from 55 individuals and 20 corporations. They had been unable to determine who was responsible for erasing 18 1/2 minutes of a Nixon tape that many thought might have been incriminating, the report said, even though a very small number of people could have been responsible. The report disclosed that prosecutors had explored whether Fords pardon amounted to illegal interference with the mandate of the special prosecutor. But both Mr. Jaworski and Mr. Ruth concluded that the presidents power to pardon was stronger than the mandate. Charles F. Ruff succeeded Mr. Ruth as the fourth and last special Watergate prosecutor. Henry Swartley Ruth Jr. was born in Philadelphia on April 16, 1931; graduated from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania Law School; served two years in the Army; and worked as a private lawyer. He was a special attorney under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. After teaching law at Penn for two years, he returned to the Justice Department in its research arm, the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice. A year later, he became criminal justice coordinator for New York City under Mayor John V. Lindsay. Mr. Ruths first marriage, to Christine Polk, ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, Ms. Mathieu, he is survived by his daughters, Deborah, Diana and Tenley Ruth, and three grandsons. After his Watergate work, Mr. Ruth worked mainly in private practice. John Dean, a Nixon aide, wrote in his book Blind Ambition: The White House Years (1976) that he once asked Mr. Ruth what he planned to do in the future. Mr. Ruth replied that he might do American Express commercials, of the sort that made fun of forgotten celebrities who had fallen from the limelight. You may not remember me, but Im the Watergate special prosecutor, he said, holding up a credit card, as if he were in a commercial. I used American Express all through Watergate, because nobody knew who I was, he continued. And they still dont know who I am. ----------------------- Henry S. Ruth, special prosecutor during Watergate probe, dies at 80 Washington Post By Matt Schudel, March 27, 2012 Henry S. Ruth, who was a key figure in the federal investigation of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, and who spent a year leading the special prosecutor’s office examining wrongdoing in the Nixon administration, died March 16 at an assisted-living facility in Tucson. He was 80. His wife, Deborah Mathieu, said he had a stroke. Mr. Ruth, a lawyer who had served in the Justice Department and had investigated organized crime, joined the special prosecutor’s office as second in command to Archibald Cox soon after the office was created in May 1973. When Cox was dismissed during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” five months later, Mr. Ruth kept the office running until Leon Jaworski took over as special prosecutor on Nov. 1, 1973. Mr. Ruth stayed on as Jaworski’s chief deputy during a tumultuous period when dozens of Watergate prosecutions took place and as a constitutional crisis about criminal activity at the highest levels of government played out between Congress and the White House. The scandal began in June 1972, when five men with ties to President Richard M. Nixon’s reelection campaign were arrested while trying to install eavesdropping devices in Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington. Nixon was reelected in November 1972 and remained in office as Cox and the special prosecution unit began to explore the depth of corruption in the administration. After refusing to turn over tape recordings of White House conversations to investigators, Nixon demanded that Cox be fired as special prosecutor. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned rather than dismiss Cox. It then fell to Solicitor General Robert H. Bork, as acting attorney general, to carry out Nixon’s order. During the confusing events of that Saturday night — Oct. 20, 1973 — Mr. Ruth was met at the door of the special prosecutor’s office by FBI officers, who initially denied him entry. He was told that the office of special prosecutor had been abolished. “Let me tell you something,” Mr. Ruth reportedly replied. “I’m going up there.” As members of his staff began to gather, Mr. Ruth rallied their spirits and vowed to continue the special prosecutor’s mission. “He had called the staff together and made a compact with them to remain in their offices and preserve the evidence they had,” Samuel Dash, counsel to the Senate Watergate committee, told The Washington Post in 1973. “But for Hank Ruth, there might not have been a Watergate staff at all when Mr. Jaworksi took over.” Mr. Ruth later described the standoff between Cox and Nixon as “the most profound moment of Watergate.” “It was pretty clear to us,” he said in a 1992 CBS News documentary, “that this act of trying to abolish our office, firing Mr. Cox, was just a straight obstruction of justice.” In July 1974, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 0 that Nixon was required to turn over his tapes. “For the first time,” Mr. Ruth said, “you really had a ruling that a president of the United States is not above the law, [that] the law will prevail over a president’s desire to keep something secret.” Nixon resigned Aug. 9, 1974, and was pardoned the next month by President Gerald R. Ford. Under Jaworski, the special prosecutor’s office brought criminal indictments against many top officials. Former attorney general John N. Mitchell, former White House counsel John W. Dean III, and former Nixon aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Charles Colson were among those who went to prison. After Jaworski stepped down in October 1974, Mr. Ruth took his place as special prosecutor. He questioned Nixon about the actions of his subordinates and about his tapes — in particular, a missing segment of 181 / 2 minutes. But by the time he resigned as special prosecutor in October 1975, Mr. Ruth still wasn’t sure who had erased the White House tapes. “In a lot of situations, people just don’t talk,” he told the New York Times. “It wasn’t as though we had a lot of cooperating witnesses in any of these matters walking into our office asking to be questioned.” Henry Swartley Ruth Jr. was born April 16, 1931, in Philadelphia. He graduated from Yale University in 1952 and from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1955. He was an Army intelligence officer and practiced law in Philadelphia before joining the Justice Department’s organized crime section in 1961 under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. In 1964, he was sent to Mississippi to enforce provisions of the newly passed Civil Rights Act. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he served on commissions examining organized crime, taught law at the University of Pennsylvania and held a top legal position in the administration of New York Mayor John V. Lindsay. After Watergate, Mr. Ruth was general counsel of the United Mine Workers Health and Retirement Funds and a partner at the former Washington firm of Shea & Gardner, where he handled legal cases for President Jimmy Carter’s former chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, and the president’s brother, Billy Carter. Mr. Ruth later practiced in Philadelphia and, in 1987, testified against the Supreme Court nomination of Bork, who had fired Cox during the Saturday Night Massacre. In the 1990s, Mr. Ruth wrote several columns for the Wall Street Journal critical of President Bill Clinton and what he called “presidential perjury and obstruction.” Mr. Ruth moved to Tucson in 1988 and was associated with the Washington law firm of Crowell & Moring until 1994. In 2003, he published a book with law professor Kevin Reitz, “The Challenge of Crime,” examining trends in crime and law enforcement. His marriage to Christine Polk ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 21 years, Deborah Mathieu of Tucson; three daughters from his first marriage, Diana Ruth of Santa Fe, N.M., Tenley Ruth of Albuquerque and Laura Ruth of Montpelier, Vt.; and three grandsons. Reflecting on the lessons of Watergate in 1992, Mr. Ruth said: “The sad residue of Watergate was so many people saw that their president had lied for 15 months and saw it so vividly and directly that a basic cynicism started in this country that has deepened, and deepened in a way where . . . I don’t believe anything that comes out of Washington.”

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=18605

Former News of the World reporter cleared of hacking allegations James Desborough, the award-winning former Hollywood reporter at the News of the World, has been told he faces no further action in relation to his phone hacking arrest. Mr Desborough is the third person to be arrested in the phone hacking investigation only to be later told there was no evidence against them. The Telegraph By Mark Hughes, Crime Correspondent 5:16PM BST 27 Mar 2012 Mr Desborough, 39, was held in August last year by officers from Scotland Yard's Operation Weeting. Today he was released from his bail and told he faces no further action. Mr Desborough is the third person to be arrested in the phone hacking investigation only to be later told there was no evidence against them. Laura Elston, a reporter from the Press Association, was held in June on suspicion of phone hacking. A month later she was told she faced no further action. Bethany Usher, a former News of the World reporter turned journalism lecturer, was arrested in November and told she was being released from her bail the following week. The decision to release Mr Desborough means there are now 19 people currently on bail in the phone hacking investigation

Questions for News Corp over rival's collapse Software company NDS allegedly cracked smart card codes of ONdigital, according to evidence to be broadcast on Panorama By David Leigh guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 March 2012 14.59 EDT Part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation empire employed computer hacking to undermine the business of its chief TV rival in Britain, according to evidence due to be broadcast by BBC1's Panorama programme on Monday . The allegations stem from apparently incriminating emails the programme-makers have obtained, and on-screen descriptions for the first time from two of the people said to be involved, a German hacker and the operator of a pirate website secretly controlled by a Murdoch company. The witnesses allege a software company NDS, owned by News Corp, cracked the smart card codes of rival company ONdigital. ONdigital, owned by the ITV companies Granada and Carlton, eventually went under amid a welter of counterfeiting by pirates, leaving the immensely lucrative pay-TV field clear for Sky. The allegations, if proved, cast further doubt on whether News Corp meets the "fit and proper" test required to run a broadcaster in Britain. It emerged earlier this month that broadcasting regulator Ofcom has set up a unit called Project Apple to establish whether BSkyB, 39.1% owned by News Corp, meets the test. Panorama's emails appear to state that ONdigital's secret codes were first cracked by NDS, and then subsequently publicised by the pirate website, called The House of Ill Compute – THOIC for short. According to the programme, the codes were passed to NDS's head of UK security, Ray Adams, a former police officer. NDS made smart cards for Sky. NDS was jointly funded by Sky, which says it never ran NDS. Lee Gibling, operator of THOIC, says that behind the scenes, he was being paid up to £60,000 a year by Adams, and NDS handed over thousands more to supply him with computer equipment. He says Adams sent him the ONdigital codes so that other pirates could use them to manufacture thousands of counterfeit smart cards, giving viewers illicit free access to ONdigital, then Sky's chief business rival. Gibling says he and another NDS employee later destroyed much of the computer evidence with a sledgehammer. After that NDS continued to send him money, he says, until the end of 2008, when he was given a severance payment of £15,000 with a confidentiality clause attached. An expert hacker, Oliver Koermmerling, who cracked the codes in the first place, says on the programme that he, like Gibling, had been recruited on NDS's behalf by Adams. The potentially seismic nature of these pay-TV allegations was underlined over the weekend, when News Corp's lawyers, Allen & Overy, sought to derail the programme in advance by sending round denials and legal threats to other media organisations. They said any forthcoming BBC allegations that NDS "has been involved in illegal activities designed to cause the collapse of a business rival" would be false and libellous, and demanded they not be repeated. On the programme, former Labour minister Tom Watson, who has been prominent in pursuit of Murdoch over the separate News of the World phone-hacking scandals, predicts that Ofcom could not conceivably regard the Murdochs as "fit and proper" to take full control of Sky, if the allegations were correct. James Murdoch, who is deputy chief operating officer of News Corp and chairman of BSkyB, was a non-executive director of NDS when ONdigital was hacked. There is no evidence, the BBC says, that he knew about the events alleged by Panorama. Gibling told the programme: "There was a meeting that took place in a hotel and Mr Adams, myself and other NDS representatives were there … and it became very clear there was a hack going on." He claimed: "They delivered the actual software to be able to do this, with prior instructions that it should go to the widest possible community … software [intended] to be able to activate ONdigital cards. So giving a full channel line-up without payment." Gibling says that when fellow pirates found out in 2002 that he was being secretly funded by NDS, THOIC was hastily closed down and he was told by Adams's security unit to make himself scarce. "We sledgehammered all the hard drives." He says he was told to go into hiding abroad. Kommerling says he was recruited by Adams in 1996. "He looked at me and said 'Could you imagine working for us?'" Kommerling was told the NDS marketing department were "looking into the competitors' products" and he cracked the codes for the system used by ONdigital, which came from the French broadcaster Canal Plus. Later he recognised the codes cracked by his own NDS team, when they got out on to the internet. They appeared on a Canadian pirate site with an identical timestamp: "The timestamp was like a fingerprint," he says. NDS published its own response to the programme's allegations before transmission, saying: "It is simply not true that NDS used the THOIC website to sabotage the commercial interests of ONdigital/ITV digital or indeed any rival." NDS admits Gibling was in its pay, but says it was using THOIC as a legitimate undercover device. "NDS paid Lee Gibling for his expertise so information from THOIC could be used to trap and catch hackers and pirates," NDS said. The company does not dispute the allegations that it got its own hands on ONdigital's secret codes, which was not itself illegal, and that the material was passed on to Adams, its security chief. But NDS says there is an innocent explanation "as part of the fight against pay-TV piracy". According to NDS: "All companies in the conditional access industry … come to possess codes that could enable hackers to access services for free." This is for the purpose of "research and analysis". They claim that it was part of Adams' job to "liaise with other pay-TV providers" and therefore "it was right and proper for Mr Adams to have knowledge of … codes that could be used by hackers". The company added: "NDS has never authorised or condoned the posting of any code belonging to any competitor on any website." Adams has denied he ever had the codes. In 2002 Canal Plus, which supplied ONdigital with its smart card system, sued NDS in a US Court, alleging that NDS had hacked its codes. But no evidence about a link to ONdigital emerged: the case was dropped following a business deal under which Murdoch agreed to purchase some of Canal Plus's assets. ONdigital briefly became ITV Digital before it went under.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/25/michael-morton-60-minutes_n_1378773.html

Cash for access: David Cameron admits dinners with 'significant' Tory party donors David Cameron has admitted he had dinner with ''significant'' Conservative Party donors at his flat in Downing Street on three occasions and a post-election dinner in No 10 since becoming Prime Minister. The Telegraph 1:30PM BST 26 Mar 2012 The Prime Minister admitted he has held a series of meeting with the high profile donors since he won the general election in 2010. Downing Street admitted they included Tory treasurer Michael Spencer and his partner, David Rowland - who gave more than £2m to the party in 2010 - and his wife, Ian Taylor and his wife and Henry and Dorothy Angest. On a fourth occasion, the PM added, donors were present at a post-election celebration in Downing Street. The dinners have not been paid for by the taxpayer and on occasion Mr Cameron cooks. But Mr Cameron insisted that most of the guests at the dinners were long-standing acquaintances and former Tory co-treasurer Peter Cruddas had never recommended that a donor should be invited. The Conservative Party also released a list of dinners at No 10 attended by significant donors, including the "thank-you dinner" following the general election on July 14 2010. Those who attended were Anthony Bamford of JCB, hedge fund tycoon Michael Hintze, Telegraph Media Group chief executive Murdoch MacLennan, Tory peer Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover, Lansdowne Partners chief executive Sir Paul Ruddock, City financier Mike Farmer and Michael Freeman. On February 28 last year, property tycoon and major donor David Rowland, who had previously been appointed party treasurer but quit before taking up the post, attended a dinner in the flat, along with party co-chairman Lord Feldman. On November 2 last year, Mr Cameron held a "social dinner for strong and long-term supporters of the party, with whom the PM has a strong relationship", including banker and Tory donor Henry Angest, Mr Farmer and oil company boss Ian Taylor. And on February 27 this year, he held a social dinner with former treasurer and major donor Michael Spencer and his partner. In a short statement ahead of a speech in London, Mr Cameron said he was ordering the Conservative party to publish details of all meals with donors on a quarterly basis. Mr Cruddas was forced to resign his post on Saturday after the Sunday Times published secret recordings in which he told undercover reporters that they could secure meetings with senior ministers by giving the party money. Mr Cameron announced that Conservative peer and senior lawyer Lord Gold will lead a party inquiry into the Cruddas affair. He also stressed that no members of the No 10 policy unit had met individuals at the request of Mr Cruddas. Pressure had been mounting on the Prime Minister to publish details of his private meetings with donors since the "cash-for-access" story broke at the weekend. He decided to use opening comments before a speech on dementia care in London to make a statement on the affair. "In the two years I have been Prime Minister, there have been three occasions on which significant donors have come to a dinner in my flat," Mr Cameron said. "In addition, there was a further post-election dinner which included donors in Downing Street itself shortly after the general election. "We will be publishing full details of all these today. None of these dinners were fundraising dinners and none of these dinners were paid for by the taxpayer. I have known most of those attending for many years." He added: "Peter Cruddas has never recommended anyone to come to dinner in my flat, nor has he been to dinner there himself. "I already publish details of my external meetings as Prime Minister - the first Prime Minister ever to do so - and I also publish all meetings that I have with media editors and proprietors. "From now on, the Conservative Party will publish details every quarter of any meals attended by any major donors, whether they take place at Downing Street, Chequers, or any other official residence." He said it was publicly known that the Conservatives ran a "Leader's Group" for those who donated more than £50,000. "From now on, the Conservative Party will in addition publish a register of the major donors who actually attend those fundraising meetings," he added. Mr Cameron said he had broadened the Tories' funding base since becoming leader, but there was still an "urgent need" for wider reform in British politics. "I am ready to impose a cap on individual political donations of £50,000 without any further need for state funding. "But to be fair this must apply equally to trade unions as well as private individuals or businesses." Mr Cameron announced new procedures to be followed by ministers if they are approached by donors on policy issues. Mr Cruddas said major donors would be able to feed ideas into the "policy committee" at Downing Street. But Mr Cameron said that no such committee existed, and no one from the No 10 Policy Unit had ever met anyone as a result of a request from the former co-treasurer. He added: "To avoid any perception of undue influence, from now on we will put in place new procedures in which if any ministerial contact with a party donor prompts a request for policy advice, the minister will refer this to his or her private office, who can seek guidance from the permanent secretary." Downing Street said it would not be releasing retrospective records of party dinners at Chequers as it would be difficult to provide an accurate record. It said there had been no "donor only" meals at the grace and favour estate. It will release details of events with significant donors in the future. No 10 denied there was anything wrong with the Prime Minister meeting activists who happen to have donated money to the Conservatives and pointed out his mother is a party donor. It said that while No 10 was a Government building, Chequers was held in trust. Cross-party talks are expected to start this week about party funding, led by Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, for the Conservatives. A spokeswoman said: "We don't want to go ahead without cross-party agreement." Labour leader Ed Miliband is to respond to the Commons statement being made by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude later. Sources said Mr Miliband had contacted Mr Cameron's office this morning, insisting that the Prime Minister should be leading in the House for the Government. ---------------------- Cash for access: full list of Downing Street dinner attendees David Cameron has admitted he had dinner with ''significant'' Conservative Party donors at his flat in Downing Street on three occasions and a post-election dinner in No 10 since becoming Prime Minister. The Telegraph 1:45PM BST 26 Mar 2012 Here are the details of dinners at official residences that were attended by individuals who had donated more than £50,000: :: July 14, 2010 - 10 Downing Street. Described as a ''thank-you dinner'' inside Number 10 itself, while flat was being refurbished. Anthony and Carole Bamford Michael and Dorothy Hintze Murdoch and Elsa MacLennan Andrew Feldman Jill and Paul Ruddock Mike and Jenny Farmer Michael and Clara Freeman :: February 28, 2011 - Downing Street flat. David Rowland and his wife. Andrew Feldman also attended. :: November 2, 2011 - Downing Street flat. Described as a ''social dinner for strong and long term supporters of the party, with whom the PM has a strong relationship''. Henry and Dorothy Angest Michael Farmer and wife Ian Taylor and wife :: February 27, 2012 - Downing Street flat. Said to have been a ''social dinner''. Michael Spencer and partner. Source: Conservative Party

BBC boss hits back at Murdochs The woman tipped to become the next director general of the BBC has hit back at past attacks on the corporation by Rupert and James Murdoch, saying that their comments are “a bit rich” in the light of the scandal engulfing News International. The Telegraph By James Hall, Consumer Affairs Editor 7:00PM BST 25 Mar 2012 Caroline Thomson, who is the BBC’s chief operating officer and one of the front-runners to replace Mark Thompson as director general, said that “nothing is more important” than the BBC’s independence. However she said that attacks on the BBC by owners of rival media companies, such as the Murdochs, had started to damage morale at the corporation. She suggested that the Murdochs’ comments questioning the BBC’s values and independence look particularly hollow in the light of the hacking scandal, which has seen the News of the World close and led to arrests at The Sun. Speaking to The Cumberland News, a website based near her home in Cumbria, Ms Thomson said: “Nothing is more important than the BBC’s independence. You absolutely can’t let politicians of any hue tell you what to do. “Two or three years ago the level of negativity began to sap morale a bit. There was a lot of criticism from politicians and a lot of the press that are owned by people who are our competitors. “Rupert Murdoch made a speech in which he lambasted Britain for having the BBC. James Murdoch said ‘the only guarantor of independence is profit’. James Murdoch made the comments about the BBC at the 2009 MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. In his speech he accused the BBC of being overly-dominant and “state sponsored”. Ms Thomson, who has an annual pay package totalling £350,000, is one of the BBC’ most powerful executives. As well as running great swathes of the corporation she has been deputising for the director general since the retirement of Mark Byford last March. In what is likely to be seen as a pitch for the top job, Ms Thomson said that becoming director general would be “enormously exciting”. Mr Thompson confirmed last week that he would be stepping down from the role this autumn. Asked whether she would like to become the BBC’s first female director general, Ms Thomson said: “It’s an enormous job. Mark Thompson once described it as like skateboarding downstairs holding a Ming vase. “If you’ve been as close to it as I have, you find the prospect that you might do it a bit awesome. You stop and think, my goodness, this would be big. On the other hand it would be enormously exciting and very challenging. So, we shall see.” Ms Thomson, 57, said that the BBC is right to freeze the licence fee. “I don’t think we’ve a right to ask people for continual licence fee increases when they’re having their salaries cut and losing their jobs,” she said. Ms Thomson joined the BBC as a journalism trainee in 1975 before leaving in the early 1980s to work for MP and SDP leader Roy Jenkins. She then joined Channel 4 before rejoining the BBC in 1996. She is married to Roger Liddle, Tony Blair’s former advisor. As chief operating officer, Ms Thomson has responsibility for the BBC’s policy and strategy, and its marketing and communications. She also overseas its legal department, its editorial policy and its business operations. She is also the director accountable for big projects such as digital switchover, the recent move to Salford and the redevelopment of the BBC’s two main sites in London.

Labour calls for independent inquiry into 'incredibly serious' Tory donor claims Labour has written letter to Prime Minister demanding disclosure of donors who have visited Downing Street, Chequers or Dorneywood and the policy representations they made, following Tory co-treasure's claims that access to Cameron can be bought. By Patrick Hennessy 1:14PM BST 25 March 2012 The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/9165600/Labour-calls-for-independent-inquiry-into-incredibly-serious-Tory-donor-claims.html The letter, from Shadow minister Michael Dugher, follows an admission by co-treasurer Peter Cruddas, filmed by undercover Sunday Times reporters, that access to David Cameron and other 'Premier League' Tory politicians costs between £2000,000 and £250,000. The Prime Minister, interviewed as he prepared to run a mile for Sport Relief this morning, criticised Cruddas for what he said were "completely unacceptable' claims, said he was right to resign and promised a party inquiry. Asked if there would be funding reforms, however, Mr Cameron replied that he had already addressed funding issues in his party before turning his back on the interviewer and racing off. "We've reformed party funding," he said. "I took over a party with £20 million of debt. It's now virtually debt-free. Related Articles "We've massively broadened our supporter base. We have very strict rules, very strict compliance, and I'm going to make sure that the rules are properly complied with in every case." Labour said that a party inquiry wasn't good enough and demanded a full independent inquiry to get to the bottom of what it called "serious allegations."called for a full independent inquiry into the "incredibly serious" allegations of influence for donations. "Today you said that you would ensure there was 'a proper party inquiry' into these matters," he wrote to Mr Cameron. "However, given the seriousness of the allegations about how Government is conducted, it is not appropriate for the Conservative Party to investigate itself. We need a full, independent inquiry. "Therefore I ask that you now request the Independent Adviser on Standards in Public Life to launch an inquiry into this matter, to answer these and any other related questions he sees fit." The letter went on to demand that he disclose which Tory donors had visited Downing Street, Chequers or Dorneywood since May 2010 and what policy representations they had made, particularly on the top rate of income tax that was cut in Wednesday's Budget. Tory peer Lord Fink will replace Peter Cruddas as the party's principal treasurer, following his resignation, it was announced earlier today. Hedge fund millionaire Lord Fink previously held the role until earlier this month, when it was taken over by Mr Cruddas. Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said Mr Cruddas's comments were "utterly disgraceful" and made the case for reform of party funding - an issue that came under scrutiny when Tony Blair's government was embroiled in allegations that honours were awarded in return for cash for the Labour Party. Former foreign secretary David Miliband said: "The idea that policy is for sale is grotesque." The Labour MP claimed the disclosures showed that the Tories had not changed. Peter Cruddas, who runs an online trading company, allegedly told potential donors that gifts of more than £200,000 would get them into the party's "premier league." This would be enough to get donors invitations to dinners with the Prime Minister and George Osborne, the Chancellor, it was alleged. Mr Cruddas was apparently filmed making the offer to undercover reporters. He was filmed apparently telling reporters posing as businessmen that making a large donation would be "awesome for your business" and that "things will open up for you". A Conservative spokesman insisted no donation resulting from any such offers had ever been accepted and said the party always abided by electoral law. In a statement Mr Cruddas said: "I only took up the post of principal Treasurer of the Party at the beginning of the month and was keen to meet anyone potentially interested in donating. "As a result, and without consulting any politicians or senior officials in the party, I had an initial conversation. No further action was taken by the party. “However, I deeply regret any impression of impropriety arising from my bluster in that conversation. Clearly there is no question of donors being able to influence policy or gain undue access to politicians. Specifically, it was categorically not the case that I could offer, or that David Cameron would consider, any access as a result of a donation. Similarly, I have never knowingly even met anyone from the number ten policy unit. But in order to make that clear beyond doubt, I have regrettably decided to resign with immediate effect.” The claims threaten to restart the row over party political funding, which have currently hit an impasse after years of negotiations. Expert said there was now a greater chance of some form of state funding for political parties to come in. Mr Cruddas, who is the founder of Currency Management Consultants, was appointed co-treasurer by the Tories in June 2011. In secretly filmed footage Mr Cruddas is heard apparently discussing what access different size donations might get at various levels of the party. "Two hundred grand to 250 is Premier League… what you would get is, when we talk about your donations the first thing we want to do is get you at the Cameron/Osborne dinners," he allegedly says. "You do really pick up a lot of information and when you see the Prime Minister, you're seeing David Cameron, not the Prime Minister. "But within that room everything is confidential - you can ask him practically any question you want. "If you're unhappy about something, we will listen to you and put it into the policy committee at number 10 - we feed all feedback to the policy committee." Reports claimed Mr Cruddas offered access even though he knew the "money" would come from a fund in based in Liechtenstein that was not allowed to make donations under UK electoral law. A Tory spokesman said: "No donation was ever accepted or even formally considered by the Conservative Party. All donations to the Conservative Party have to comply with the requirements of electoral law. These are strictly enforced by our compliance department. “Unlike the Labour Party, where union donations are traded for party policies, donations to the Conservative Party do not buy party or government policy. “We will urgently investigate any evidence to the contrary.” Reports claimed meetings with Mr Cameron and other senior Tory figures were available at both 10 Downing street and Chequers, the Prime Minister's official country residence in Buckinghamshire. Mr Cruddas was said to have alleged that attendance at dinners with Mr Cameron earns the Conservative party some £5million a year. Mr Cruddas is said to have amassed a £750million fortune through spread betting, is a member of the party's ruling board as well as being a co-treasurer. Mr Cameron said in 2010 that political lobbying was the "next big scandal" waiting to happen in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal uncovered by The Telegraph the previous year.

Aside from the controversy over whether this subject belongs here, because I live in Houston I posted a link to this thread on my Facebook page to alert friends in Texas and elsewhere to be sure to watch this important program.

James Murdoch severs all ties with UK newspapers LONDON | Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:49am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - James Murdoch has severed all ties with News Corp's British newspaper business, which is at the centre of multiple investigations over phone and computer hacking and bribery, according to regulatory filings. Murdoch is under scrutiny for his role in failing to uncover systematic illegal interception of phone calls at the News of the World newspaper, which was shut down last July, and stepped down as chairman of News Corp's UK publishing arm last month. One document filed this week shows that Murdoch has resigned from the board of Times Newspaper Holdings, which was set up to guarantee the independence of the Times of London and the Sunday Times when News Corp acquired the titles in 1981. Earlier documents show that Murdoch stepped down from the boards of holding companies News Corp Investments and News International Publishers Ltd shortly after resigning as chairman of News International, News Corp's UK publishing arm. News Corp declined on Saturday to comment on the resignations. Murdoch was recently appointed deputy chief operating officer of News Corp and is now based in New York, where he is focusing on the media conglomerate's pay-TV businesses. This year, he gave up his directorships of GlaxoSmithKline and Sotheby's, but he remains chairman of British satellite broadcaster BSkyB, of which he was formerly chief executive and in which News Corp owns 39 percent.

Vanity Fair early on urged Jack to get this done but the man who he had been raised to believe was his father died before Jack could do so. Jack was living in the Netherlands and his alleged father was living in Houston and this was a contributing factor in it not being timely done.