Douglas Caddy

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.98b3636e34b08a0fcd674a900f2deb90.b1&show_article=1

I never miss reading Nathaniel's daily posts on Facebook because they, too, are always thought provoking.

Newspapers face wave of lawsuits over use of private eye Whittamore Lawyers tell Information Commissioner to notify victims who were targets of illegal searches The Independent By Ian Burrell Thursday 26 January 2012 News organisations responsible for more than 17,000 dubious personal information checks carried out by a disgraced private detective could face civil litigation under plans to notify victims that they were targeted. Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, is facing a legal challenge to release details of victims identified in Operation Motorman, an investigation into the activities of the Hampshire-based private eye Steve Whittamore, who was convicted of illegally accessing personal data in 2005. Acting on legal advice, the campaign group Hacked Off has written to Mr Graham, demanding he inform the thousands of people who are listed in Whittamore files held by the Information Commissioner's Office as having been the targets of apparently illicit searches, including criminal-records checks, vehicle-registration inquiries and information "blags". Newspaper groups have in recent months been given access to the files by the ICO. In its letter, seen by The Independent, Hacked Off argues that targets should be notified so they have an opportunity to challenge claims by the news groups that the searches were done in the public interest. In an official report based on Operation Motorman and subtitled The Unlawful Trade in Confidential Personal Information, the ICO said: "This was not just an isolated business operating occasionally outside the law, but one dedicated to its systematic and highly lucrative flouting." The Operation Motorman inquiry has been referred to repeatedly during Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into media standards. Motorman's former chief investigator, Alec Owens, who had been The Independent's whistleblower in stories on the ICO's failure to interrogate journalists, voiced his concerns in evidence to the judge. Tina Weaver, editor of the Sunday Mirror, a major client of Whittamore's, told the inquiry "it would be surprising" if all the 123 transactions between the private detective and her paper were lawful. Express Newspapers admitted it continued to use Whittamore until July 2010. And the Mail on Sunday said it had spent £20,000 on his services and continued to hire him for 13 months after his arrest in 2003. In its letter to Mr Graham, who appears before Lord Justice Leveson today, Hacked Off says: "It is likely, if not inevitable, that media organisations have illegally retained and processed data which the ICO has judged to have been illegally obtained." If the ICO refuses to notify the people who were targeted by Whittamore, Hacked Off and its supporters will likely seek to have that decision subjected to judicial review. The ICO said Mr Graham would be addressing the issue today at the Leveson Inquiry. The Independent revealed in September that Whittamore's targets included victims of some of the worst crimes from the past 15 years

Nothing of great substance disclosed here but it is interesting to watch Ethel Kennedy comment on her daughter's video that will premier this summer on HBO. http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c2#/video/us/2012/01/23/nr-lemon-life-of-ethel-kennedy.cnn Also: http://ethelmovie.com/

Davos elites to seek reforms of 'outdated' capitalism Jan 22, 2012 05:51 PM US/Eastern www.breitbart.com http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.be33fda73987ff722e71ca3a18f1bfaf.351&show_article=1#IDComment271597230 Economic and political elites meeting this week at the Swiss resort of Davos will be asked to urgently find ways to reform a capitalist system that has been described as "outdated and crumbling." "We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations," said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum. "Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole. "We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual," the 73-year-old said, adding that "capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us." Some 1,600 economic and political leaders, including 40 heads of states and governments, will be asked to come up with new ideas as they converge at eastern Switzerland's chic ski station for the 42nd edition of the five-day World Economic Forum which opens Wednesday. The eurozone's failure to get a grip on its debt crisis and the spectre this is casting over the global economy will dominate discussions. "The main issue would be the preoccupation with the global economy. There will be relatively less conversation about social responsibility and environment issues -- those tend to come to the fore when the economy is doing well," John Quelch, dean of the China European International Business School, told AFP. "The main conversation will be about a deficit of leadership in Europe as a prime problem," he added. The annual talk-shop comes barely a week after the eurozone's reputation took a further battering, as ratings agency Standard and Poor's downgraded the credit-worthiness of nine eurozone countries, including stripping France of its triple-A grade. While saved from the downgrade embarrassment, the region's economic powerhouse Germany has nevertheless been forced to lower its growth forecast, dragged down by its neighbours' debt woes and weaker demand from emerging markets. The forum will centre on the issue from the beginning, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel opens with a keynote speech. European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde will also give a broader insight into the international economic impact of the eurozone crisis. The World Bank slashed its global economic growth forecasts to 2.5 percent for 2012 and 3.1 percent in 2013 -- sharply lower than previous estimates of 3.6 percent for both years. Beyond economic issues, the forum will address a plethora of other subjects. Sessions will range from scientific discoveries expected to shape 2012, to a discussion on the differences perceived when a Beethoven sonata is played on historic and modern instruments, to how virtual games can be harnessed for innovation in the real world. It will also hear about the profound changes in the Arab world after a series of revolutions swept across the region in 2011. New Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali and Egyptian presidential candidate Amre Moussa will both be present at the meeting. Political issues in other regions will be addressed, with the participation of Mexican Felipe Calderon, his Nigerian counterpart Goodluck Jonathan and Salva Kiir Mayardit, President of the fledgling South Sudan. Up to 5,000 Swiss soldiers have been mobilised to secure the location, and the air space around eastern Switzerland's Davos region will also be severely restricted during the week. But anti-capitalist demonstrators are planning to make their presence felt. The Occupy WEF protestors have built igloos in the middle of the village perched 1,500 metres above sea level and are planning a protest against those they call "self-proclaimed elites

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/24/former-police-chief-lapd-coordinated-with-cia-on-terrorism/

http://lewrockwell.com/orig11/baker-r9.1.1.html

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=18690

Revealed: How Robert Kennedy feared Mafia would blind his children in acid attack Robert's widow Ethel speaks out and tells family stories in first interview for 30 years By Daniel Bates Daily Mail Last updated at 6:27 PM on 23rd January 2012 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090680/Robert-Kennedy-feared-Mafia-blind-children-acid-attack.html Robert F Kennedy feared his children would be blinded by the mafia in an acid attack as revenge attack for investigating them, his widow has revealed. Speaking out for the first time in 30 years, Ethel Kennedy said that her late husband was anxious they would be targeted as retaliation for his probe into mafia racketeering. He saw a report about an American journalist who had been blinded in an acid attack by the mob and feared they would do the same to him. The disclosure will add to conspiracy theories that the mafia may have been responsible for Kennedy’s death. He was shot dead by Sirhan Sirhan in 1968 but speculation has raged that his crusade against the mob whilst serving as U.S. Attorney General may have be the root of his demise. Mrs Kennedy opened up to promote ‘Ethel’, a new film about her life directed by her daughter Rory, the youngest of her eleven children. Mrs Kennedy, 83, said that her last husband was scared after New York Post journalist Victor Riesel was blinded in an acid attack because of articles he had written about the mob. ‘We were told they were going to do the same with our children,’ she said. Her eldest daughter Kathleen, one of several family members interviewed for the film, added: ‘We couldn’t leave school with the other kids at the end of the day. ‘We had to wait in the principal’s office to be picked up.’ The conspiracy theories relating to the mob and the Kennedy family usually involve New Orleans mafia don Carlos Marcello, who was deported to Guatemala by Mr Kennedy in 1961 after he was appointed Attorney General by his brother John. Afterwards Marcello is said to have threatened John F Kennedy with the traditional Sicilian curse ‘Take the stone from my shoe’. And when the President died, Marcello associate Jimmy Hoffa is supposed to have said: ‘This means Bobby is out as Attorney General.’ The film about Mrs Kennedy also gives a rare glimpse into life inside Camelot and amusing details, such as how Mr Kennedy slid down the White House bannister when his brother became president. She reveals that it was very hard for her husband to seek office for the first time and that he had to ‘struggle for everything’ before becoming a senator in New York in 1964. There is also colour about her own life including how she held wild parties which President Kennedy asked her to tone down, and that she was once charged with horse theft after she rescued a neighbour’s malnourished stallions. The Kennedy family were back in the spotlight last week after John F. Kennedy Jr’s former assistant revealed her deep regret for convincing his wife to board the doomed flight which crashed and killed them both. In her memoir RoseMarie Terenzio said she ‘should have kept her mouth shut’ rather than speak to Carolyn Bessette on July 16, 1999. Carolyn had reportedly been going through problems with her husband but Ms Ternzio helped patch things up and persuaded her to travel with him to a wedding in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. According to reviews ‘Ethel’ does not touch on the other family tragedies that befell Mrs Kennedy after her husband’s death. Her son David died of a drug overdose in 1984 and another son Michael was killed in a skiing accident in 1997. There is also no mention of the notorious Martha Moxley murder case and her nephew Michael Skakel who was convicted over it in 2002. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090680/Robert-Kennedy-feared-Mafia-blind-children-acid-attack.html#ixzz1kOOQ3LD3

'It's a going to be a hell of a day': Declassified JFK tapes reveal president's sense of foreboding about fateful trip to Dallas • Secret discussions about Vietnam War, Soviet relations and the race to space revealed • Nearly 30 minutes still classified due to national security concerns By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 3:52 PM on 24th January 2012 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091000/JFK-tapes-paint-picture-presidents-final-hours.html Newly released tapes recorded by President John F. Kennedy reveal his feeling of foreboding just before his assassination. Speaking to an aide three days before he was shot dead in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, JFK eerily comments on what would become the day of his funeral ‘Monday?,’ he says. ‘Well that's a tough day.’ ‘It's a hell of a day, Mr. President,’ a staffer replies. Scroll down to hear excerpts from the tapes The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is releasing the last 45 hours of more than 260 hours of privately recorded meetings, conversations and phone calls. They include discussions about the conflict in Vietnam, Soviet relations and the race to space, plans for the 1964 Democratic Convention and re-election strategy. There are also tender moments with his children. But some of the material captured on the cassettes is still deemed so sensitive to national security they have to remain classified. Kennedy kept the recordings a secret from his top aides. He made the last one two days before his death. Much of the material concerns the day-to-day schedules which make up White House life. The exchange about JFK's fateful trip to Texas comes as senior staffers try to organise his diary for the week. Oval Office: Tapes give an insight into Kennedy's last months in office JOHN F. KENNEDY ON.... Washington politics 'We've got so mechanical an operation here that it doesn't have much identity where these people (voters) are concerned Young voters 'What is it we have to sell them?. We hope we have to sell them prosperity, but for the average guy the prosperity is nil.' Conflicting reports from Vietnam ‘You both went to the same country?’ The President talks about expecting a briefing book by the Saturday before the trip and then moves on to a meeting with General Nasution of Indonesia ‘I will see him, when is here here? Monday?,' he says. A staffer responds: 'Monday and Tuesday.' 'Well that’s a tough day,' the President remarks. 'It’s a hell of a day Mr President. He’ll be coming back here though, I understand on Friday because I offered to entertain at dinner.’ JFK: ‘I’m going to be up at the Cape on Friday – so I’ll see him Tuesday (November 26).' There is also a session with advisers on young voters, which could easily take place in a modern-day administration. ‘What is it we have to sell them?,’ the President asks before saying: ‘We hope we have to sell them prosperity, but for the average guy the prosperity is nil.' ‘He's not unprosperous, but he's not very prosperous. ... And the people who really are well off hate our guts.’ JFK also comments on the distance between the political machine and voters. ‘We've got so mechanical an operation here in Washington that it doesn't have much identity where these people are concerned,’ he says. ’ Kennedy library archivist Maura Porter said that JFK may have been saving them for a memoir. It is also possible he wanted to keep an indisputable record of his meetings, prompted by the military producing a different interpretation of a discussion about the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Porter said the public first heard about the existence of the Kennedy recordings during the Watergate hearings. In 1983, JFK Library and Museum officials started reviewing tapes without classified materials and releasing recordings to the public. Porter said officials were able to go through all the recordings by 1993, working with government agencies when it came to national security issues and what they could make public. In all, the JFK Library and Museum has put out about 40 recordings. She said officials excised about five to ten minutes of this last group of recordings due to family discussions and about 30 minutes because of national security concerns. Porter has supervised the declassification of these White House tapes since 2001, and she said people will have a much better sense of the kind of leader JFK was after hearing them. While some go along with meeting minutes that also are public, she said, listening to JFK's voice makes his personality come alive. She said he comes across as an intelligent man who had a knack for public relations and was very interested in his public image. But she said the tapes also reveal times when the president became bored or annoyed and moments when he used swear words. The sound of the president's children, Caroline and John Jr., playing outside the Oval Office is part of a recording on which he introduces them to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. ‘Hello, hello,’ Gromyko says as the children come in, telling their father, ‘They are very popular in our country.’ JFK tells the children, mentioning a dog Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gifted the family: ‘His chief is the one who sent you Pushinka. You know that? You have the puppies.’ JFK Library spokeswoman Rachel Flor said the daughter of the late president has heard many of the recordings, but she wasn't sure if she had heard this batch. ‘He'd go from being a president to being a father,’ Porter said of the recordings. ‘... And that was really cute.’ On another recording, Kennedy questions conflicting reports military and diplomatic advisers bring back from Vietnam, asking the two men: ‘You both went to the same country?’ He also talks about trying to create films for the 1964 Democratic Convention in colour instead of black and white. ‘The colour is so damn good,’ he says. ‘If you do it right.’ More information about the archive can be found on www.jfklibrary.org Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091000/JFK-tapes-paint-picture-presidents-final-hours.html#ixzz1kOLKw7dG

Leveson inquiry: Lord Patten accuses politicians of 'grovelling' to Murdoch BBC Trust chair and former Tory minister says current MPs are mistaken in believing newspapers determine their fate By Lisa O'Carroll guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 January 2012 14.55 EST Lord Patten, the former Conservative cabinet minister who is now chairman of the BBC Trust, said politicians were wrong to seek close relationships with newspaper proprietors and had "demeaned themselves" by "grovelling" to the likes of Rupert Murdoch. Giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry, the man who ran John Major's surprise election win in 1992 even disputed the claim that the Tories were only re-elected that year because of the Sun – the tabloid which ran the headline "If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights" on polling day. Patten said the present crop of MPs were mistaken in believing newspapers determined their fate and should realise that Rupert Murdoch's help is only available when it wasn't needed. "I think major political parties, and particularly their leaders, over the last 20 or 25 years have often demeaned themselves by the extent to which they've paid court on proprietors and editors," he told the inquiry. "Of course I'm in favour of talking to editors and journalists, but I'm not in favour of grovelling and I think politicians have allowed themselves to be kidded that editors and proprietors determine the fate of politicians. I think that there's plenty of evidence that in some cases, particularly News International newspapers, they back the party that's going to win an election. So they give you what you don't need in return for more than a great deal of faith," he added. He said it was wrong to think that it was Margaret Thatcher, under whom he served in office, who started this trend of meeting journalists and proprietors. Patten acknowledged that she did spend more time with some journalists not because they supported her policies but "because she thought they were intelligent and she liked arguing with them". One of her favourites, he revealed, was the Guardian political commentator Hugo Young and "they were chalk and cheese in their political views". He said the balance in democracy "tipped" in favour of newspaper proprietors once the "assumed truth took root that News International determined the outcome of elections" in the early 1990s. Patten said Conservative party research conducted at the time of the 1992 election found that the majority of Sun readers thought it was a Labour newspaper. In a dig at David Cameron, Patten revealed that he had met the prime minister only once since becoming chairman of the BBC Trust in May 2011. "I'd have presumably seen the prime minister and other party leaders more frequently if I'd been a News International executive," he said. Although he confirmed Murdoch had personally spiked a book of his about his time as governor of Hong Kong, he said he held no "vendetta" against him and said some newspapers in Britain only survived because of him. He described the media mogul as "a sort of entrepreneurial genius". Lord Patten cited Sky News's "spirited independence" in covering the phone hacking affair as proof that pluralism was alive and well in the media. The BBC chairman said the onus lay on the press to come up with a system of regulation that worked for the public as well as the publishing industry, adding that he could imagine some sort of statutory framework which didn't curtail the freedom of the press. However he said so far newspapers had yet to come up with a blueprint that would work. "I think it would be preferable if the written media themselves would clean out the stables," he said. Earlier the BBC director general Mark Thompson told the inquiry he was opposed to broadcast-style statutory regulation of the print media. "In my view it is quite desirable in terms of plurality of media in this country that the press are not as regulated and constrained as a broadcast media whose power … and whose reach is broader and more immediate." Thompson also admitted that the BBC spent £310,000 on private investigators between 2005 and 2011 and had earlier used Steve Whittamore, the investigator who was convicted in 2005 for illegally obtaining and disclosing information under the Data Protection Act. He said he believed there was a "strong public interest justification" for using Whittamore who had been asked to help establish whether a known paedophile was getting a flight out of the country.

CIA Tracks Public Information For The Private Eye by Rachel Martin National Public Radio January 22, 2012 Listen to the Story http://www.npr.org/2012/01/22/145587161/cia-tracks-public-information-for-the-private-eye Weekend Edition Sunday Secrets: the currency of spies around the world. The rise of social media, hash-tags, forums, blogs and online news sites has revealed a new kind of secret — those hiding in plain sight. The CIA calls all this information "open source" material, and it's changing the way America's top spy agency does business. NPR recently got a rare behind-the-scenes look at the CIA's Open Source Center. It operates on the down-low, though it deals with public material. We aren't allowed to tell you where the Open Source Center is. All we can say is that it's housed in an unmarked and unremarkable office building just off a nondescript, busy street. My producer and I were asked to leave our phones in our car. We were ushered inside to a small room with half a dozen analysts working at cubicles, their eyes fixed to computer screens. There was a bank of television monitors on the wall projecting news from around the world, which gave it kind of a newsroom feel. The managing editor is Glen; he gave no last name. He pointed out a poster on the back wall made to look like a 1950s comic book, and in one corner it read, "There's no escaping the information highway." Changing Responsibilities Social media have forced the CIA into the fast lane. The Open Source Center's predecessor organization was basically a U.S. government translation service. Analysts translated foreign radio broadcasts or newspapers that sometimes took weeks to come in by ship. Today, CIA analysts are still translating, but they're also responsible for figuring out what it all means. They're also under more pressure now to identify potential crises, sometimes with only a tweet or a status update to go on. Doug Naquin, the director of the Open Source Center, says the volume of information the people are analyzing is massive. He won't define "massive," but other intelligence officials say since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it's been like trying to drink from a fire hose. The political revolutions erupting around the Middle East have turned that fire hose into a flood. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill blamed the CIA for missing the Arab Spring, specifically the democratic uprising in Egypt. Naquin says his analysts knew something was brewing in the country. "I want to clarify — we didn't predict, but we said it was going to be a game changer and did pose a threat to the regime," he says. Naquin says that was in April 2009. His team wrote up reports on some kind of unrest, fueled by social media, but those reports were overlooked. That was in part, he says, because the CIA and the intelligence community as a whole weren't taking social media seriously. "I remember there was a lot of resistance or skepticism, is the best word to say. 'Well it's just chatter, it's no value,' etc.," he says. "And we said ... 'No, there's something there.' " 'Narratives' Decoded But figuring out what that something is — that's the hard part. Naquin says his office isn't trying to uncover secrets so much as they're trying to put together what he calls a country's "narrative." "You know, what are the underlying beliefs? So in the United States, for example, one of our master narratives is the 'American Dream.' It's the same in other countries," he says. Building those narratives for foreign countries means tracking almost anything. For example, "What's trending? Is it the Justin Bieber concert?" Naquin says. Yes, the CIA uses Justin Bieber as a kind of social barometer. "Well, it says to me that their attention is not terribly focused on other issues that we may consider more serious," he says. "I kind of raised it as a frivolous point, but if Justin is No. 1, and the water situation is four or five, it'll give you sense of the mindset of a certain part of the population." More Than Just A Google Search We were given access to a regular morning meeting where the CIA analysts talked about what they had been monitoring, though we were told in advance that the meeting would be sanitized. In other words: No sensitive stuff in front of the reporters. These analysts take what they learn through open source material and put it into classified reports, used by the CIA and other government agencies. But it's hard to see how this is more specialized than what a graduate student could research and write as a senior thesis. Naquin has heard this critique before. "It's very easy to say, 'Well, this is what I found in Google, and this is what they're saying, so this must be true,' and that's I think one of the biggest changes over the past five years," he says. "People realize this is much more than just doing a Google search." Analysts are responsible for monitoring everything that comes out of a specific country, but they're also tracking political movements and terrorist groups. Beth — that's what the CIA wants us to call her — spends her day looking at terrorist-related websites and monitoring Twitter feeds and Facebook pages that raise red flags. "In order for these really reclusive groups to communicate with their supporters, they have to do it in open forum, often times using the Internet," she says, "where, you know, they can reach supporters around the world, and the more open they have to be, the easier it is for people like us to find it." Broader Impact Social media can kind of "out" terrorist sympathizers. The challenge for the CIA is figuring out exactly who and where they are. That's complicated because the Internet makes it easy for users to hide themselves — to literally create digital identities using shadow IP addresses. Someone could be tweeting in Arabic under a Yemen email address, but it could be a U.S. citizen sitting in his house in Ohio. The problem with that is it's illegal for the CIA to monitor Americans on American soil. "We can't tell where individual posts come from," Naquin says. So if they're pursuing someone and, at some point in that analysis they realize that that person is sitting in the United States, how does that change what they're doing? "I can't get into those types of questions in too much detail," he says, "but if there's any — let me put it broadly — if there's any situation in which we came across anything that involved U.S. persons, we would either stop or we would turn it over to one of our partners on the domestic side." But the line between what kind of "monitoring" is legal and what's not could get more complicated as the technology evolves. Naquin says he's anticipating a future when our household appliances are all wired up to our iPhones and email accounts. "The Internet is going from connecting people to connecting to things," he says. "People's thoughts that would never make it out of their homes now are available to everybody on the Internet." For open source analysts with the CIA, that just means more information and hopefully more valuable intelligence. For those living in a country ruled by a government with a penchant for domestic spying, it's potentially a Big Brother nightmare

News of the World reporter played police Milly Dowler voicemail Daily Telegraph By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter 2:00PM GMT 23 Jan 2012 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9032994/News-of-the-World-reporter-played-police-Milly-Dowler-voicemail.html A News of the World reporter played police a tape-recording of Milly Dowlers hacked voicemails within a month of her disappearance, but officers chose not to investigate, a police report has disclosed. Surrey Police knew in April 2002 that the tabloid had illegally accessed the schoolgirls mobile phone messages, but instead of pressing charges a senior officer from the force invited two News of the World staff to a private meeting at the forces headquarters to discuss the case. Up to three other police forces were also aware of the hacking by the News of the World, but they did nothing until newspapers reported it last July. MPs said the Surrey force now had serious questions to answer about its response, and suggested the force could have prevented phone-hacking becoming endemic at the News of the World if it had acted sooner. A report on Surrey Polices internal investigation into why it failed to investigate the hacking also discloses that a News of the World reporter told police the newspaper had obtained Millys mobile number and the PIN number used to access her voicemails from her schoolfriends. In fact, the News of the World had paid the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to do so. The report also reveals that a News of the World investigator posed as one of Millys friends in an attempt to blag information about her, and suggests that a News of the World investigator also posed as Millys mother. The 13 year-old went missing on her way home from school on March 21, 2002, and on April 13 a News of the World reporter contacted Surrey Police to say they had potentially significant information. The reporter said a voicemail left on Millys phone suggested she had tried to get work with a recruitment agency. Surrey Police officers working on the Dowler investigation were unaware that the agency had left the voicemail message until the force was contacted by the News of the World reporter. A week later the News of the World played a tape recording of the message to a Surrey Police press office. The police report, which has been submitted to the Leveson Inquiry, does not name the News of the World journalists who discussed voicemails with its officers, nor does it name the officers and press officers who knew about it. But officers from Sussex Police, who reviewed the case in 2002, also failed to do anything about the hacking. The report implies that West Mercia police would also have been told about it, but it does not say whether the Metropolitan Police, which worked closely with Surrey on the case, was told. The internal police report, published by the parliamentary culture, media and sport committee, discloses that three weeks after Milly went missing, a woman claiming to be Sally Dowler phoned a recruitment agency asking if Milly was working for them. The agency had earlier left a message on Millys mobile phone by mistake, after taking down the wrong number for one of its clients. The message was then accessed by the News of the World, which became 110 per cent sure the 13-year-old had run away from home and was looking for work. Although the report by Surrey Police does not draw any conclusions about who was impersonating Millys mother, it leaves no doubt that the blagger could only have been someone who knew about the voicemail that had been left in error. It also reveals that a senior Surrey Police officer and press officer met two representatives of the News of the World at the forces headquarters in July 2002, but no notes of what was said at the meeting have been found. The investigation, which is ongoing, has not yet established how some of Millys voicemail messages came to be deleted in the days after she was abducted, which gave her parents false hope that she was still alive. Mulcaire has denied that he deleted the messages, and News Group Newspapers, which closed down the News of the World because of the scandal, has said it has no evidence to suggest it was responsible for the deletions. But it states conclusively that a suggestion made by the former NoW lawyer Tom Crone that the voicemails were given to the newspaper by the police is not correct. Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: The information provided by Surrey Police raises serious questions over what they knew about phone hacking and when. Had they acted in 2002 or had Sussex Police flagged this up in their review of Operation Ruby it may have prevented the culture of hacking becoming endemic at News of the World. The Home Affairs Committee has also received a letter from Surrey Police with additional information to questions posed back in October 2011. We will be considering this information carefully and will look into investigating the reasons why Surrey Police did not follow up on this evidence.

Tom Watson calls for police to investigate Times over email hacking Daily Telegraph By Mark Hughes, Crime Correspondent 11:04AM GMT 23 Jan 2012 The Times could be subject to a police inquiry after Scotland Yard received a complaint from Labour MP Tom Watson calling on the force to investigate the newspaper over email hacking allegations. Mr Watson has sent a letter to the Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers urging Scotland Yard to launch an investigation into The Times amid allegations one of its reporters admitted hacking into the email account of a police officer. Both James Harding, the editor of The Times, and Tom Mockridge, the News International chief executive, recently gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry acknowledging that a reporter at the paper had admitted to hacking but not naming the reporter as Patrick Foster. The newspaper later admitted Mr Foster, 28, had hacked the account of Richard Horton, a police officer who blogged anonymously under the name Nightjack. In an article published on Thursday, Mr Harding admitted it was the NightJack case but did not disclose whether he knew before the court case that the emails had been hacked, or if he knew about it before the story was published. The Times last week said that Mr Foster, 28, had "informed his managers before the story was published that he had, on his own initiative, hacked into Mr Horton's email account". Mr Horton was outed in 2009 after the Times fought an injunction in an effort to reveal his identity. Mr Foster, who has contributed articles to the Daily Telegraph, was later dismissed from the newspaper over an unrelated incident. Mr Watson's letter to the Metropolitan Police, which was also sent to the Attorney General, said: "It is clear that a crime has been committed - illicit hacking of personal emails. "A journalist and unnamed managers failed to report the crime to their proprietor or the police. "I must ask that you investigate computer hacking at The Times. In so doing you will also be able to establish whether perjury and a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice have also occurred." A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police was not able to comment immediately. The force has set up Operation Tuleta to look at allegations of email hacking. This weekend, it emerged Mr Watson would write to Lord Justice Leveson this week formally requesting he recall Mr Harding following fresh revelations surrounding the NightJack blogger case. Mr Watson said: “James Harding has questions to answer. “Who at the company was aware the High Court and the blogger’s lawyers were not told about this?” Mr Watson added that it raised further questions as to whether James Murdoch, the chairman of News International, knew. In the wake of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, Mr Murdoch told MPs last year that he was unaware of any computer hacking. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "We can confirm that a letter was received today, Monday 23 January, from MP Tom Watson.Officers from Operation Tuleta are in contact with Mr Watson in relation to specific issues he wishes to raise.We are not prepared to discuss the matter further."

Murdoch’s Trusted Outsider Takes a Larger Role The New York Times By AMY CHOZICK January 23, 2012 Last August, as News Corporation scrambled to contain a phone-hacking scandal at its British newspaper unit, Chase Carey, the company’s president and chief operating officer, proposed an idea to his boss, Rupert Murdoch: buy back $5 billion worth of stock. Mr. Murdoch was skeptical, saying he would rather focus on getting through the crisis than on the stock price, according to people familiar with Mr. Murdoch’s thinking who would not publicly discuss private conversations. Mr. Carey persisted. As of this month, News Corporation had repurchased $2.5 billion of Class A shares and had largely kept investors happy, despite the continuing scandal in Britain. In the first week of trading in 2012, News Corporation shares rose to a 52-week record, or 30 percent above the lows it hit in the weeks after public outcry over the hacking scandal began in July and higher than it had been before. The crisis in London has left Mr. Murdoch stretched thin and increasingly reliant on his No. 2, Mr. Carey, 58, who was once considered to be serving as a placeholder until one of the Murdoch children took over. Never in the $60 billion media company’s history has an executive other than Mr. Murdoch taken such a major role in running the daily operations. “Chase is one of those people with no fear,” said Michael Ovitz, co-founder of the Creative Artists Agency. “He’ll say, ‘This is what’s good for you. And this is what’s bad for you.’ That’s hard to do when you’re dealing with a founder and patriarch.” Mr. Carey, who wears blazers with elbow patches and a Wyatt Earp-style handlebar mustache, leads earnings calls, speaks at investor conferences and strategizes on everything, including retransmission fees with cable and satellite companies. Unlike Mr. Murdoch and his son James, who continue to face scrutiny related to phone hacking and the accusation that nepotism sometimes overrides shareholder interests, Mr. Carey’s outsider status makes him a steady and less polarizing figure, analysts said. “He’s increasingly becoming the face of the company,” said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG. In August, Mr. Murdoch, 80, told analysts that Mr. Carey would take over as chief executive in an emergency. “Chase is my partner, and if anything happened to me, I’m sure he’ll get it immediately,” he said. The question of succession at News Corporation is a delicate one. Most senior executives declined to comment on the record about Mr. Carey, expressing concern that any positive observations might appear as a slight to James Murdoch. Mr. Carey declined to comment. Interviews with more than a dozen current and former associates reveal that Mr. Carey is in many ways Mr. Murdoch’s alter ego. He is aloof while Mr. Murdoch is engaged with the public (most recently on Twitter, where Mr. Murdoch has criticized opponents of antipiracy legislation); he is all-American while Mr. Murdoch is worldly (Mr. Carey once dragged a colleague to a sports bar while on business in Hong Kong); and he is apolitical while Mr. Murdoch is conservative. “Every visionary has 40 bad ideas and three good ones, and you need those checks and balances,” said Greg Nathanson, the former president of the Fox Television Stations. “Murdoch’s visions were amazing, but he couldn’t execute them without a person like Chase.” Mr. Carey, a New York native, college rugby player and die-hard Yankees and Giants fan, first joined News Corporation in 1988 after working in the home entertainment and finance divisions of Columbia Pictures. His mustache hides a scar from an injury from a car accident on the way to a football game at Colgate University, where he was active in the Delta Upsilon fraternity. The driver died, and Mr. Carey went through the windshield. As the fledgling Fox network’s chief operating officer, Mr. Carey quickly became Mr. Murdoch’s preferred negotiator. In 1993, Mr. Murdoch bet Mr. Carey $20 that the network known for “The Simpsons” and “Beverly Hills, 90210” could not capture the National Football League’s primary television rights from venerable CBS. The league had twice rejected Fox’s offers, and CBS had been known for football for 38 years. Mr. Carey put together a $1.56 billion deal that beat out CBS and put Fox on the map. Mr. Murdoch paid up on his $20 bet. “That was a game changer for the next two decades,” said Paul Tagliabue, who served as the N.F.L. commissioner during the negotiation. Of Mr. Carey’s negotiating tactics, Mr. Tagliabue said: “He didn’t shout. There were no histrionics. He was almost deceptively calm.” From 1996 to 2002, he served as co-chief operating officer with Peter Chernin, a showman heavily involved in the company’s creative units. Mr. Carey has little interest in the glamorous Hollywood business. In 2002, Mr. Carey unexpectedly resigned, saying he did not see a role for himself in the company after its failed bid to take over DirecTV. The following year, Mr. Murdoch succeeded in a $6.6 billion deal for DirecTV, and Mr. Carey returned to lead the satellite-television broadcaster, which now is no longer part of News Corporation. In the years he was based in Los Angeles, Mr. Carey lived in Manhattan Beach and frequented the San Francisco Saloon, a bar known for its buffalo wings and sawdust-covered floors. Under his leadership, DirecTV expanded its United States subscriber base to more than 18 million, from 12 million. “It was pretty cut and dry with Chase,” said Derek Chang, executive vice president for content strategy and development at DirecTV, where Mr. Carey served as president and chief executive from 2003 to 2009. Mr. Chang added: “He didn’t micromanage. You got in, you did your job, or you didn’t have a job.” Mr. Murdoch lured Mr. Carey back to News Corporation in 2009. Last fiscal year, Mr. Carey earned $30.2 million, a 16 percent increase from the previous year, making him the company’s second-highest-paid executive after Mr. Murdoch, whose compensation totaled $33.3 million. In a company known for its outsize personalities, Mr. Carey has no interest in the spotlight. (He seldom interferes with the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, according to people familiar with the company.) He regularly orders a hamburger and fries during power lunches in News Corporation’s third-floor executive dining room and rides a packed commuter train home to the Connecticut suburbs, often popping a can of Budweiser on the way, despite having “the highest car allowance available to a senior executive,” according to a 2009 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Colleagues describe him as all-business with little interest in making small talk, unless it is sports related. Several longtime associates said they knew about Mr. Carey’s wife and his son and daughter only because of an annual Christmas card. “We talked about the Murdoch kids more than we talked about our own kids,” said one former News Corporation executive who worked closely with Mr. Carey. Mr. Carey, like the Murdoch children, does not share his boss’s affection for the newspaper business, according to colleagues. He would rather the company, which owns The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and other papers, home in on more lucrative and less distracting pursuits. “He hates politics. He thinks News Corp. should be a sports and entertainment business,” said one executive from Britain not authorized to discuss Mr. Carey on the record. Mr. Carey is now using his negotiating tactics to again alter the economics of television. He has pressured satellite and cable providers to pay higher retransmission fees, which have become among the largest drivers of growth at News Corporation and some other media companies. “This whole retransmission battle is a big, big, big deal, and he’s the most pivotal figure in it,” said Staley Cates, president and chief investment officer of the Memphis-based Southeastern Asset Management, which holds roughly 52.5 million nonvoting shares in News Corporation. But some media bankers said Mr. Carey was picking the low-hanging fruit. They would like him to put more effort into developing new businesses in addition to exploiting existing ones. A little talked-about result of the phone-hacking scandal, they said, is that the younger visionary figures in the company, namely James and his sister Elisabeth Murdoch, have been at least temporarily marginalized. “He doesn’t have a huge ego that has to dominate every minute of every day,” said Mitchell Stern, former chairman and chief executive of Fox Television Stations and Twentieth Television. “Where he was lacking, which I think he’d admit, would be in the creative content.” In March, the company said James Murdoch would move to New York from London and become deputy chief operating officer, reporting to Mr. Carey. In recent weeks, British lawmakers have uncovered new documents that further threaten the reputation of James Murdoch, who oversaw British operations when the hacking took place. That leaves Mr. Carey as the company’s most stable senior executive untainted by the British tumult. “He’s completely disconnected from the whole saga. He’s running the business,” the media tycoon and investor Haim Saban said of Mr. Carey. At a tumultuous time, “he’s the Rock of Gibraltar,” Mr. Saban added. Despite Mr. Carey’s more public role, News Corporation is still very much a family business. “He’s influencing the day-to-day decisions in the company more than anyone ever has other than Rupert,” said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Nomura Securities. But in the end, “I don’t think anyone is fooling themselves that this isn’t the Murdochs’ company.”

Phone hacking: News of the World journalists lied to Milly Dowler policeSurrey police report released by MPs reveals reporters interfered with investigation as well as hacking missing girl's phone http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/23/phone-hacking-news-world-milly-dowler Surrey police letter on the Milly Dowler investigation By David Leigh guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 January 2012 07.37 EST News of the World journalists who hacked Milly Dowler's phone told a string of lies and interfered with the investigation into her disappearance in 2002, according to a Surrey police report released by a parliamentary committee. In a month that has already seen the News of the World apologise for hacking three dozen celebrities and crime victims, the Surrey report released on Monday paints an even more graphic picture of tabloid methods. It parallels the evidence revealed at the current Leveson inquiry into press behaviour. However, the Surrey police report does not shed any further light on the still unresolved question of how voicemails came to be deleted from Dowler's phone. They say the Metropolitan police, which are investigating phone hacking at the News of the World, have still not reached a final conclusion. "When and the extent to which Milly's mobile phone voicemail was unlawfully accessed (and whether any messages were deleted) are matters which form part of the MPS's ongoing investigation." Last July, the Guardian reported that the NoW hacked Dowler's phone and deleted messages in the first few days after her disappearance in March 2002. After further inquiries, the Metropolitan police suggested in December that while the tabloid did hack Dowler's phone, it was unlikely to have been responsible for specific deletions that caused her parents to have false hopes that she was alive. Today's published Surrey timeline, based on police logs from 2002, depicts a news organisation that tried to bully detectives into backing its own misguided theories, as police searched desperately for clues about the girl who went missing on March 21 2002. According to the file, the reporters were so confident of their own power that they openly admitted the paper had obtained tapes of the voicemails on Dowler's phone. Their misinterpretation of the messages then made them mistakenly believe she was still alive. Rather than tell her family and police of this important information, however, it appears they concentrated on getting a scoop. Reporters made calls to an employment agency with which they thought she had registered, and sent what the agency called "hordes" of reporters to harass them. Only on the Saturday immediately before publication, did they contact the authorities. The Surrey files have been edited to withold the names of the journalists, two of whom are currently under criminal investigation by the Metropolitan police's Operation Weeting. What Surrey police do describe, however, is the way they first learned of interference in their investigation. In mid-April 2002, an employment agency in the north of England, which had no involvement whatever with Dowler, rang to complain. Staff arrived for work "to find hordes of reporters from the News of the World waiting". The firm said: "We have had a News of the World reporter harassing us today. He says that our agency has recruited Milly as an employee, demanding to know what we know and saying he is working in full co-operation with the police." However, the Surrey report says "the NoW reporter's assertion that he was working with the police was untrue". The previous day, someone also had rung the agency pretending to be Milly's mother. The files show a NoW reporter subsequently claimed to police that the agency had admitted the 13-year-old Dowler was registered for employment with them. This claim also proved untrue. On 13 April, the police heard from the NoW directly. A journalist demanded "to be put in touch with a senior police officer". He claimed "he had what could be significant information". The journalist disclosed that "the recruitment agency had telephoned the mobile phone number of Milly Dowler [and left a voicemail message] with an offer of work". Police at first thought this story of a voicemail must be the work of a hoaxer. They eventually discovered that it was "a pure coincidence … of no evidential value". The agency had merely rung the wrong number by mistake, and left a message for "Nana", which the reporters had persuaded themselves sounded like "Amanda", Milly's proper name. But the News of the World refused to accept its story had been knocked down. One reporter insisted that it could not be a hoax because "the NoW had got Milly's mobile phone number and pin from school children". The NoW had five reporters working on the story, it told police, and it printed a story in its first edition on 14 April 2002 claiming police were "intrigued" by the alleged new lead. It quoted verbatim from three voicemails, and gave the impression they had been retrieved by the police themselves. After protests from Surrey police, the story was modified in later editions to suggest that the employment agency message was merely a hoax. The paper wrote detailing further voicemail messages it possessed, and demanding police supply more information. One reporter said "what the Surrey police press officer was telling him was not true and was inconceivable … the NoW was moving its investigation to the north of England, that Milly had been there in person and that she had applied for a job in a factory. The unidentified reporter whose name has been redacted said that the NoW "know this 110% we are absolutely certain". But according to the newly released report, the NoW's "110%" certainty was simply based on illegal interceptions, a misunderstanding of the facts, and an apparent confidence that police would not dare take action against it for phone hacking. The former News of the World journalist, Neville Thurlbeck, told Channel 4 News last week that he had been acting as news editor at the time of the hunt for Dowler. But he said he had not been aware that her voicemails had been hacked by the paper. The Surrey police flatly contradict the suggestion that they could have been the source of the Dowler voicemails which were published in the News of the World at the time, a claim made both by Thurlbeck and by Tom Crone, the NOW's former lawyer, in his evidence to the committee. They say: "The NoW obtained that information by accessing Milly Dowler's voicemail". No one at Surrey police was aware of its existence until told by the NoW journalists. The committee chairman, Conservative MP John Whittingdale, told Sky News the paper "appears as if they may have actually interfered or impeded the police in their investigations". Conservative committee member Damian Collins said: "Of all of the documents and evidence that have been produced by our phone-hacking inquiry, this is the most sickening and exposes the black hearts of those involved in perpetrating and covering up this scandal." News International declined to comment.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/20/cia-collaboration-with-new-york-police-department-was-never-legally-approved/

Judge orders search of News of the World computers Laptops and deskop computers alleged to contain evidence that executives deliberately destroyed evidence of phone hacking By Amelia Hill guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 January 2012 15.45 EST News Group Newspapers has been ordered to allow a search of computers alleged to contain evidence that News of the World executives deliberately destroyed damning phone-hacking evidence. During legal discussions on Thursday before a civil trial scheduled for 13 February, the company failed to convince Mr Justice Vos that the search of three laptops assigned to senior employees and six desktop computers was "disproportionate". Dinah Rose QC, for NGN, said the search was unnecessary because there had been "no policy of deliberate destruction" at the paper. But Vos said that if he had "acceded to [NGN] suggestions back in early 2011 that disclosure was not necessary because admissions had been made, the phone-hacking history might be very different". He said the material that might be found on the three laptops belonging to an unidentified senior employee of NGN "may well, on the evidence of the emails I have already been shown, contain documents or even emails which may bear on the policy of deletion. "It seems to be a distinct possibility [that information on the laptops] could contain information relevant to the deliberate deletion of email and go beyond just 'colour' but indicate precisely what the deletion was taking place for, which may go far beyond scope of present admissions by NGN," he said. "I'm entirely satisfied that these laptops should be searched for purpose of relevant disclosure." He said there were compelling questions about whether the paper had engaged in a campaign of deliberate destruction of evidence, had lied, deliberately concealed evidence, made payments to police, or had "actively tried to get off scot-free", including by destroying a "very substantial number of emails" and computers of journalists. "The court has had an admission of sorts to the effect that NGN is content that aggravated damages should be paid on the basis of the somewhat startling admissions I have read out, but not that future claims should be assessed on that basis. "I have been shown a number of emails ... which show a rather startling approach to the email record of NGN," he said. Three days after the solicitor for Sienna Miller had asked that NGN retained any emails in relation to phone hacking, "a previously conceived plan to conceal evidence was put in train by NGN managers". Rose said so much had been disclosed and admitted by NGN that it was disproportionate to order the company to search the computers for further evidence. "There comes a point when we say we're three weeks away from trial and ... we can say enough is enough." Her claim was robustly rebutted by Vos. "The day you can say 'that's enough' is the day I give judgment – although you can't even say it then because of the number of other cases waiting in the wings." The trial, set to last three weeks, is intended to give guidance on damages for current and future lawsuits and out-of-court settlements in the five-year-old scandal. But nine out of 10 of the claimants were still waiting for full disclosure from NGN, said their lawyer, Jeremy Reed. In the cases of three, including Tracey Temple, John Prescott's former lover, NGN had yet to even admit liability, he said. "I want to submit that evidence of deliberate destruction is relevant," he said, pointing out that, since Vos ordered NGN to make a full disclosure of material on 20 December 2011, the company had released just 30 more pages of information. "This is like a jigsaw. The claimants are trying to piece it together but we're not sure we've even got all the pieces. Much has been lost or deliberately destroyed."

How News Group hid the phone-hacking scandal Judge criticises Murdoch empire as it agrees aggravated damages for 37 victims of News of the World By Dan Sabbagh and Amelia Hill guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 January 2012 18.04 EST A high court judge said the Murdoch-owned company behind the News of the World had made "an admission of sorts" that it engaged in a deliberate cover-up of evidence relating to phone hacking, on the day that the publisher paid an estimated seven figures in damages to settle 37 phone-hacking claims brought by public figures ranging from Jude Law to John Prescott. Mr Justice Vos, the judge presiding over the hacking cases, told News Group Newspapers (NGN) he had seen evidence which raised "compelling questions about whether you concealed, told lies, actively tried to get off scot free". The judge ordered the company to search a number of computers which he said could contain evidence that its executives deliberately tried to destroy evidence of phone hacking, saying that he had seen emails which showed a "startling approach to the email record of NGN". He said he had seen emails that showed how, days after the actor Sienna Miller wrote to the company asking it to retain emails which might relate to hacking her phone, "a previously conceived plan to conceal evidence was put in train by NGN managers". The judge read out a section from the confidential court papers detailing the cover-up allegations made by hacking victims against the company's executives and directors. It included the charge that the company "put out public statements that it knew to be false", that it had "deliberately deceived the police" and had destroyed evidence of wrongdoing including "a very substantial number of emails" as well as computers. NGN refused to admit the allegations but agreed that damages paid to the victims could be assessed "on the basis of the facts alleged". Earlier it emerged that while the company refused to admit its former directors and senior executives had presided over a cover-up, it agreed that "aggravated damages" could be calculated "as if" the allegations that they lied, obstructed police and destroyed evidence were true. The Murdoch subsidiary said it had made the concessions solely for the purpose of "the interest of the prompt and efficient determination" of the claims against it. Tamsin Allen, a lawyer at Bindmans, who acted for John Prescott, and Labour MPs Chris Bryant and Denis MacShane, said it was surprising that News Corporation had agreed to the admissions on this basis. "You'd expect an organisation with the resources of the Murdoch empire to fight these sorts of allegations." The actor Jude Law received the highest disclosed payout of £130,000 damages plus costs as payments totalling £640,000 were made in 15 cases where the amounts were made public. Prescott received £40,000, Bryant received £30,000; Sadie Frost, Law's former wife, received £50,000; and Gavin Henson, the Welsh rugby international £40,000. However, with damages from the other settlements and costs factored in, lawyers estimated that News International's bill could hit £10m. Law, whose former partner Miller had previously accepted a £100,000 settlement from the News of the World publisher, said he was "truly appalled" and "it is clear that I, along with many others, was kept under constant surveillance for a number of years". He added: "No aspect of my private life was safe from intrusion by News Group Newspapers, including the lives of my children and the people who work for me. It was not just that my phone messages were listened to: News Group also paid people to watch me and my house for days at a time and to follow me and those close to me." Until a year ago, News Corporation had maintained that phone hacking was the work of a single "rogue reporter", Clive Goodman, who was jailed in 2007 alongside private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, during inquiries held by both parliament and the Press Complaints Commission. That defence gradually unravelled as a group of public figures – including Thursday's litigants – brought a series of civil actions against the newspaper, unearthing evidence indicating that the practice was more widespread. Mark Thomson, of law firm Atkins Thomson, said: "After years of denials and cover-up, News Group Newspapers has finally admitted the depth and scale of the unlawful activities of many of their journalists at the News of the World and the culture of illegal conduct at their paper." Phone hacking dated back to at least 2002, when the News of the World targeted Prince Harry's friend Guy Pelly, and ran on until 2006 with targets such as 7/7 hero Paul Dadge and Sara Payne, whose daughter Sarah was murdered. Law and his friends were also monitored. At the heart of the hacking lay Mulcaire, who was employed by the newspaper on a £100,000-a-year contract, and who was a co-defendant in many of the civil actions. Mulcaire was asked by several News of the World journalists to target public figures and victims of crime – and he also provided information that allowed a number of reporters to conduct hacking of their own. Mulcaire's lawyer Gavin Millar, told the high court that he was "not involved" in the admissions that led to the settlements and he was not a party to them. Many of the settlements go back to the time when Andy Coulson, David Cameron's former spin doctor, edited the News of the World – between 2003 and his resignation in 2007, after former royal reporter Goodman was jailed for hacking phones belonging to members of the Windsors' household. A smaller number include events dating back to the editorship of Rebekah Brooks, who was Coulson's immediate predecessor, and who subsequently became chief executive of News International before her resignation last summer in the wake of revelations about the hacking of a phone belonging to Milly Dowler. Another victim was Christopher Shipman, son of the serial killer Harold Shipman, who was told by police that the News of the World had been privy to his emails in August 2004 – less than a year after his father's death. News Corporation said: "Today, NGN agreed settlements in respect of a number of claims against the company. "NGN made no admission as part of these settlements that directors or senior employees knew about the wrongdoing by NGN or sought to conceal it. "However, for the purpose of reaching these settlements only, NGN agreed that the damages to be paid to claimants should be assessed as if this was the case." Rupert Murdoch's Twitter account, meanwhile, remained silent. But in court, as each of 18 settlements were read out, Michael Silverleaf, QC for the company, said he was there to offer "sincere apologies to the claimant for the damages

Filmmaker denies JFK conspiracy theories By Katie Mettler | IDS | January 18, 2012 University of Indiana Daily Student newspaper http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=84957 At 88 years old, John Barbour is a man made for the hills of Hollywood. His golden-brown skin, shiny jewelry and blue-and-brown pinstripe suit allude to his early pursuits in gambling, acting and stand-up comedy. But the passion in his raspy and convincing voice reveals the second half of Barbours life, the half consumed by conspiracy theories that have baffled America for almost 50 years. Wednesday, Union Board presented Barbours 1992 documentary The JFK Assassination: The Garrison Tapes, followed by a question-and-answer session with Barbour. The film features Barbours exclusive interviews with late New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who was ridiculed for his investigation into the CIAs involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The questions surrounding who shot Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, are infinite, and Kennedy-themed literature has lined bookshelves for decades. But Barbour dismissed these accounts; in his opinion, there is no such thing as conspiracy theories, only an abundance of facts. And he said the facts that convinced him came from Garrisons book: Lee Harvey Oswald was involved with members of the CIA, and the CIA killed Kennedy. In 1970, Gallop polls indicated that more than 80 percent of the public believed Oswald didnt act alone, if at all. But only 22 percent thought there should be another investigation, Barbour said. How do you say your mothers not a virgin? It just sounds ugly, Barbour said. How do you say your leaders are murderers? It just sounds ugly. When its obvious, it sounds ugly. Garrison published Heritage of Stone, a book that spelled out what he found during his investigation into the CIA. In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that four shots had been fired at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, vindicating the potential for conspiracy theories. In 1980, Barbour invited Garrison to come on his hit NBC show Real People, Garrison was on film for three hours, and Barbour said it was … the most frightening, exhilarating, terrifying three hours I have ever spent in my entire life. When Barbour tried to make a documentary, critics ran amuck, and he lost Real People in the early 1980s. Finally, in 1992, Barbour released the documentary. It won the 1993 San Sebastian Film Festival award the same day Garrison died. Since then, Barbour has traveled the globe, answering questions about the documentary at film screenings. However, his documentary has never aired on public television in the United States. But Barbour said he is less concerned by money and more motivated by educating people about what he thinks truly happened in 1963. Barbour talked about the injustice of the 24-hours news coverage of recent wwmurder cases, involving Casey Anthony, O.J. Simpson, Laci Peterson and Natalee Holloway. Those murders were tragic, he said. But they only affected one person. The murder of John Kennedy changed the economy, changed our foreign policy, changed our political structure. … I guarantee you, if we had cell phones or the Internet on Nov. 22, 1963, there would be at least a dozen prominent Americans hung or shot for the murder of John Kennedy. -------------------- Since I posted the above article, the publication has reacted to public criticism of its original misleading headline by changing it to make it more accurate of what John Barbour said.

Editor of The Times faces questions over email hacking Daily Telegraph 3:37PM GMT 19 Jan 2012 The editor of The Times, James Harding, is facing questions over when he learned that one of his journalists had hacked into an anonymous police blogger's email account. In June 2009, the newspaper identified a serving Lancashire police officer, Dc Richard Horton, as the author of the popular blog called NightJack. The Times published the story after winning a High Court ruling that said the blogger had no right to anonymity. In its evidence to Mr Justice Eady, the newspaper said its reporter had deduced the blogger’s identity using publicly available information. But it was revealed this week that a reporter at the paper, Patrick Foster, had hacked into the policeman’s email account. In a statement today, Mr Harding said the newspaper had "published the [NightJack] story in the strong belief that it was in the public interest even though concerns emerged about the conduct of the reporter." "After the judge handed down his judgment overturning the injunction on the grounds of public interest, we published. We also took the decision to look into the reporter’s conduct and he was subsequently disciplined.” In his statement on Tuesday, Mr Harding, told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics that one of his reporters had hacked into a “third party’s” email account in 2009. However, Mr Harding did not make clear if he had been told of the email hacking at the time it happened or much more recently, nor did he name the reporter. Mr Harding referred to the incident in his witness statement to the Leveson Inquiry, dated October 14 last year: “The Times has never used or commissioned anyone who used computer hacking to source stories. There was an incident where the newsroom was concerned that a reporter had gained unauthorised access to an e-mail account. “When it was brought to my attention, the journalist faced disciplinary action. The reporter believed he was seeking to gain information in the public interest but we took the view he had fallen short of what was expected of a Times journalist." Tom Mockridge, the chief executive of News International, which owns the newspaper, also gave evidence to the inquiry this week. Mr Mockridge’s initial written evidence to the inquiry, also written in October last year, stated that there had been a “suspicion” that a Times reporter “might have gained unauthorised access to a computer”. His statement added that the reporter, also unidentified, had denied "gaining unauthorised access to a computer" but was given a formal warning. However, Mr Mockridge submitted a second statement to the inquiry, dated December 2011, and provided additional information. Mr Mockridge said: “Following further inquiries, I now understand that the reporter in fact admitted the conduct (email account hacking) during disciplinary proceedings, although he claimed that he was acting in the public interest. “The journalist was disciplined as a result. He was later dismissed from the business for an unrelated matter.” In a further development, the newspaper today identified Mr Foster as the reporter involved and stated that the reporter had informed “his managers before the story was published that he had, on his own initiative, hacked into Mr Horton’s email account”. It admitted that the incident “raised issues about the approval process for newsgathering at the newspaper” but did not specify who those managers were and whether Mr Harding was among them, or whether he was informed that Mr Foster had hacked into the police officer's email account. In 2009 a High Court judge agreed that there was a public interest in naming the detective and overturned an injunction that Mr Horton had obtained against The Times. Lawyers yesterday said that if it were proven that Times executives were aware of the hacking before the injunction hearing, it “would be a scandal”. Experts said it raised the prospect of individual executives and the newspaper being sued for invasion of privacy and prosecuted for computer hacking. David Allen Green, legal correspondent of the New Statesman magazine, wrote on his blog that if The Times went to court over a story “which they knew to be based on computer hacking and did not inform the court, or found out later, and… still told no one about it, then that… would be a scandal”. NightJack was a popular website which gave insights into the reality of police work. It won the Orwell Prize in 2009 for being the best political blog. That year, Mr Horton, the NightJack author and Lancashire detective constable, won a brief injunction preventing his identity being made public. In June of that year, Mr Justice Eady,overturned the injunction and accepted that Mr Foster had identified the blogger “by a process of deduction and detective work, mainly using information available on the Internet”. The Times today claimed that “the role hacking played in Mr Foster’s investigation remains unclear”. It has been reported elsewhere that Mr Foster, who has since written freelance articles for The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, publicly told colleagues that he had guessed the password to Mr Horton’s email account.

Phone Hacking: list of people who settled with News of the World Christopher Shipman, the son of serial killer GP Harold Shipman, and Jude Law, the actor, are among the victims of the News of the World phone-hacking who have settled their damages claims. Here is a list of the victims read out at the High Court. Christopher Shipman had emails containing sensitive legal and medical information intercepted Daily Telegrah 4:30PM GMT 19 Jan 2012 The awards announced were: :: £30,000 to MP Chris Bryant :: undisclosed damages to footballer Ashley Cole :: £50,000 to Jude Law's ex-wife, designer Sadie Frost :: £30,000 to Lisa Gower, who had a relationship with actor Steve Coogan :: £60,000 to an anonymous individual known as HJK :: £40,000 to Joan Hammell, former chief of staff to Lord Prescott :: £40,000 to rugby player Gavin Henson :: £40,000 to Jude Law's personal assistant Ben Jackson :: £130,000 to actor Jude Law :: £32,500 to Labour MP Denis MacShane :: £35,000 to PR consultant Ciara Parkes :: £40,000 to entrepreneur Guy Pelly :: £40,000 to Lord Prescott :: £25,000 to journalist Tom Rowland :: £25,000 to solicitor Graham Shear :: substantial undisclosed damages including aggravated damages to Christopher Shipman, son of serial killer Harold Shipman :: £27,500 to author and journalist Joan Smith :: substantial undisclosed damages to former Labour MP Claire Ward

Phone hacking settlement: NoW publisher accused of cover-up Victims' lawyers accuse directors of deliberately deceiving investigators and destroying evidence By David Leigh guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 January 2012 06.53 EST The most significant new element of Thursday's hacking settlement announcements is the accusation by the hacking victims' lawyers that Murdoch company directors tried to destroy evidence. Although the lawyers' statement does not name names, it specifically accuses directors of News Group Newspapers Ltd, the Murdoch subsidiary which controlled the News of the World, of seeking to conceal the wrongdoing by "deliberately deceiving investigators and destroying evidence". The directors of NGN were headed, from April 2008, by James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son. James has already been at the centre of public allegations that he first authorised a cover-up in June 2008, by agreeing to buy the silence of Gordon Taylor, one of the hacking victims, with a lavish £700,000 secret pay-off. The following year, former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks joined the NGN board. This was on 23 July 2009, a few days after the Guardian revealed the existence of the cover-up at the News of the World. Brooks, who by now had been promoted by Rupert Murdoch to head his entire UK newspaper operation, responded by claiming: "The Guardian coverage, we believe, has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public." Thursday's announcement accused NGN of a "conspiracy, a cover-up and the destruction of evidence/email archives". It does not spell out on which dates the alleged destruction of the email archive/evidence took place. But it says, under the company's new independently chaired management committee that "attempts are being made to reconstruct email archives which had been destroyed by News Group in an apparent attempt to cover up wrongdoing". The allegations are carefully worded: the Murdoch organisation has not made any formal admission of guilt that could assist any criminal prosecution. The announcement says: "News Group has agreed to compensation being assessed on the basis that senior employees and directors of NGN knew about the wrongdoing and sought to conceal it by deliberately deceiving investigators and destroying evidence." But the lawyers make plain their belief that they have obtained a sheaf of incriminating documents, the significance of which News Group does not care to attempt to contest in open court. They say that in the course of the litigation, they have: "obtained nine separate disclosure orders from the court. As a result, documents relating to the nature and scale of the conspiracy, a cover-up and the destruction of evidence/email archives by News Group have now been disclosed to the claimants". About 60 civil cases have been steadily fought through the courts throughout last year. The disclosure battles have taken place largely behind the scenes. The Leveson inquiry public hearings may have attracted more limelight, with their lurid tales of tabloid malpractice, but the lawsuits, brought by three firms of solicitors working in a co-ordinated project, have been the driving force behind the unfolding of the entire hacking scandal. The series of disclosure orders forced the abandonment of the News of the World's "rogue reporter" defence, the revival of a major police inquiry, which is still continuing, the departure of the prime minister's press secretary, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, and the setting up of the Leveson inquiry itself. Leveson is likely to want to be supplied with the confidential papers detailing the reasons behind any settlements announced this morning. This week, James Harding, the editor of the Murdoch-controlled Times, published a confessional editorial saying: "It appears that the News of the World routinely used illegal means to unearth stories of questionable, if any, public interest. As the evidence of wrongdoing came to light, News International, Rupert Murdoch's company that also owns The Times, was unable or unwilling to police itself. This was a disgrace." Thursday's statement from Bindmans, which represented a number of the claimants, credited "the work of investigative journalists at the Guardian" in helping the victims by revealing the cover-up at the News of the World.

Murdoch company to pay hacking damages in 36 cases Jan 19, 7:47 AM (ET) By JILL LAWLESS LONDON (AP) - Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper company on Thursday agreed to pay damages to 36 high-profile victims of tabloid phone-hacking, including actor Jude Law, soccer player Ashley Cole and former British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. In settlements whose financial terms were made public, amounts generally ran into the tens of thousands of pounds (dollars) - although Law received 130,000 pounds (about $200,000) to settle claims against the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid, and its sister paper, The Sun. News Group Newspapers admitted that 16 articles about Law published in the News of the World between 2003 and 2006 had been obtained by phone hacking, and that the actor had also been placed under "repeated and sustained physical surveillance." The company also admitted that articles in The Sun tabloid misused Law's private information - although it gave no further details. Law's lawyer said Thursday the acts had caused "considerable distress ... distrust and suspicion." Law was one of 60 who have sued News Group Newspapers after claiming their mobile phone voicemails were hacked. Other cases settled at London's High Court on Thursday include those of former government ministers Chris Bryant and Tessa Jowell, former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, ex-model Abi Titmuss and Sara Payne, the mother of a murdered girl. Law's ex-wife and actress Sadie Frost received 50,000 pounds (about $77,000) in damages plus legal costs for phone hacking and deceit by the News of the World. Bryant received 30,000 pounds (about $46,000) in damages plus costs, while Prescott - a prominent member of the Labour Party - accepted 40,000 pounds (about $62,000). After each statement, News Group lawyer Michael Silverleaf stood to express the news company's "sincere apologies" for the damage and distress its illegal activity had caused. The claimants described feeling mistrust, fear and paranoia as phone messages went missing, journalists knew their movements in advance or private information appeared in the media. Frost said the paper's activity caused her and Law to distrust each other. Rugby player Gavin Henson said he accused the family of his then-wife singer Charlotte Church of leaking stories to the press. Other claimants included Guy Pelly, a friend of Prince William, who was awarded 40,000 pounds (about $62,000), and Tom Rowland, a journalist who wrote for one of Murdoch's own newspapers, the Sunday Times. He received 25,000 pounds ($39,000) after News Group admitted hacking his phone. In some cases the company admitted hacking into emails, as well as telephone voice mails. Christopher Shipman, son of serial killer Harold Shipman, had emails containing sensitive legal and medical information intercepted by the News of the Word. He was awarded "substantial" undisclosed damages. The slew of settlements is but one consequence of the revelations of phone-hacking and other illegal tactics at the News of the World, where journalists routinely intercepted voicemails of those in the public eye in a relentless search for scoops. The wide-ranging scandal prompted Murdoch to close the 168-year-old paper in July and several of his senior lieutenants have since lost their jobs. British politicians and police have also been ensnared in the scandal, which exposed the cozy relationship between senior officers, top lawmakers, and newspaper executives at Murdoch's media empire. A government-commissioned inquiry set up in the wake of the scandal is currently investigating the ethics of Britain's media - and the nature of its links to police and politicians. The settlements announced Thursday amount to more than half of the phone-hacking lawsuits facing Murdoch's company, but the number of victims is estimated in the hundreds. Mark Lewis, a lawyer for many of the phone hacking victims, said in an email that the fight against Murdoch wasn't over. "While congratulations are due to those (lawyers) and clients who have settled their cases, it is important that we don't get carried away into thinking that the war is over," Lewis said. "Fewer than 1 percent of the people who were hacked have settled their cases. There are many more cases in the pipeline. ... This is too early to celebrate, we're not even at the end of the beginning." Many victims had earlier settled with the company, including actress Sienna Miller and the parents of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, who were awarded 2 million pounds (about $3.1 million) in compensation. --- Associated Press Writer Raphael Satter contributed to this report.

Times reporter hacked into police blogger's email account Newspaper article revealing identity of anonymous blogger Nightjack was based on material obtained from Hotmail account By David Leigh guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 January 2012 15.15 EST A controversial 2009 Times article "outing" an anonymous police blogger called Nightjack was based on material obtained by email hacking, it has emerged in evidence to the Leveson inquiry. Times editor James Harding told the inquiry on Tuesday he had disciplined the reporter involved for accessing the email account by giving him a written warning. He said in a witness statement: "There was an incident where the newsroom was concerned that a reporter had gained unauthorised access to an email account. When it was brought to my attention, the journalist faced disciplinary action. The reporter believed he was seeking to gain information in the public interest but we took the view he had fallen short of what was expected of a Times journalist. He was issued with a formal written warning for professional misconduct." Times sources subsequently identified the reporter as a 24-year-old former graduate trainee, Patrick Foster. They said he openly disclosed that he guessed security questions for an anonymous email account run by a Lancashire detective, Richard Horton. Horton failed in a subsequent legal bid to protect his anonymity, and the Times "outed" the constable in June 2009. Horton's blog, which won the prestigious Orwell prize for its descriptions of a PC's life, was closed down and he was reprimanded by his police superiors. Harding did not disclose the reporter's identity in his Leveson statement, nor did he reveal that the hacking had led to a published Times article. The Times did not state in its original story that the blogger's identity had been obtained by penetrating Horton's Hotmail account. It said Foster had "deduced" Nightjack's identity. Earlier witness statements, by News International's chief executive Tom Mockridge and the Times' lawyer Simon Toms, did not disclose that unauthorised email access had resulted in a published article. They referred only to "attempted" access allegedly denied by the reporter. Mockridge later corrected his statement. The "outing" of Nightjack stirred up controversy at the time, with some bloggers arguing that it was morally wrong to expose a writer and thus close down a widely-valued publication. Foster, who has declined to speak about the affair, maintained at the time that his action was justified in the public interest because Horton had given details of sex attacks in his blog which could be traced to individual incidents, and had therefore revealed details which should have been kept confidential. In his amended statement, Mockridge said Foster had subsequently been "dismissed following an unrelated incident". Foster has subsequently written freelance articles for both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph.