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Rebekah Brooks? 'We helped choose her police station' says Bell Pottinger By Oliver Duff The Independent Wednesday, 07 December 2011 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rebekah-brooks-we-helped-choose-her-police-station-says-bell-pottinger-6273278.html# Bell Pottinger's senior executives described how they prepared the former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks for her evidence to Parliament and also helped her to choose which police station she would like to be arrested at and questioned. David Wilson, chairman of Bell Pottinger Public Relations, and Tim Collins, managing director of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, also talked in less-than- complimentary terms about News International's public relations strategy after the hacking scandal broke. Ms Brooks – who retained Bell Pottinger after her resignation this July, and who has denied any knowledge of hacking – is unlikely to be impressed by the firm's apparent readiness to mention its role in her PR strategy whilst pitching to possible clients. Mr Collins told undercover reporters posing as possible clients that Bell Pottinger helped prepare Ms Brooks for giving evidence to MPs on the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee shortly after her arrest on suspicion of making corrupt payments to police and conspiring to intercept voicemails. "She spent all yesterday morning in the room opposite this corridor while we were very rude to her to prepare her for the select committee," said Mr Collins. "We were four hours in a waiting room adjacent to the committee room waiting to go in. She was really upset actually, in tears when Rupert got attacked because he is her mentor. "He's almost like a father figure to her. I know there are stories about her in the past, I didn't know her too well in the past, so I won't comment on whether she was ruthless or whatever, I must say I see a very honorable, honest woman who's trying to fight to clear her name at the moment." Mr Collins said Bell Pottinger's advice had stretched to helping choose which police station she should be questioned at. "Dave was on the phone... 'No, that nick's not quite right, no no, that one's got a car park, no that one's down a tunnel', and I thought he was on to some very dodgy part of the criminal underworld but in fact it was his brother-in-law who's a police officer." Mr Wilson said he had waited outside for her while she was questioned. "She's been very open and honest and said, 'I didn't know a thing, didn't know any of it'. She said that yesterday and to be honest I believe her. " Mr Collins bemoaned News International's initial handling of the phone-hacking crisis from a PR perspective. "Dave's the PR expert but the problem from our perspective is News International were making a lot of mistakes in the two weeks or so prior to [her resignation] and they've just started making fewer." Ms Brooks could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Glenn Mulcaire arrested over phone hacking scandal Daily Telegraph By Mark Hughes, Crime Correspondent 2:56PM GMT 07 Dec 2011 Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the News of the World, has been arrested by detectives investigating phone hacking at the former Sunday tabloid Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Weeting confirmed that a 41-year-old man was arrested at 7am on Wednesday morning and was questioned at a south London police station. It is understood the man is Mr Mulcaire, a 41-year-old former professional footballer turned private investigator, who worked for the News of the World for about five years until 2006. Police said he was held on suspicion of conspiracy to hack mobile phones and on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. The arrest is the 16th in Operation Weeting although it is the first time that anyone has been arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice in connection with the investigation. Mr Mulcaire’s solicitor Sarah Webb refused to comment on his arrest. Neighbours said they saw activity at Mr Mulcaire’s home in Sutton, south London, early yesterday [WED] morning. A neighbour said: “I heard something going on this morning just after 7am. “I looked out the window and there was a car parked outside his house, just a normal car, it wasn't marked. “It didn't know if he had been arrested. I didn't see him being brought out of the house because I just glanced out the window when I heard the noise and then went back inside.” Mr Mulcaire, who was paid more than £100,000 a year while working for the News of the World, is alleged to have accessed voicemails on behalf of the newspaper in order to gain stories on celebrities. He is being sued by a number of high profile individuals for breach of privacy. Mr Mulcaire’s arrest comes just days before his case for breach of contract against News International is due to commence. He is suing the company in an attempt to make them pay his legal bills. In July News International announced that it would stop paying Mr Mulcaire’s legal bills with immediate effect. It emerged earlier this year that the company had paid "approximately £246,000" to lawyers acting for Mulcaire. Mr Mulcaire claims that the company had a contractual obligation to pay the legal bills. The case is listed to appear in the High Court next week. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “On 7 December 2011 officers from Operation Weeting arrested a man, 41, in connection with phone hacking and perverting the course of justice “It would be inappropriate to discuss any further details at this time.” The phone hacking investigation was launched in January following a series of allegations about the extent of hacking at the Sunday tabloid. Police are currently sifting through 300 million emails given to them by News International.It has cost more than £3 million. The scandal has seen the News of the World closed down and has caused the resignations of two of Scotland Yard’s most senior officers – former commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates, an ex assistant commissioner. It also prompted the resignation of two former News of the World editors. Andy Coulson, then the Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman, and Rebekah Brooks, the then News International chief executive, have stepped down and have both since been

Phone hacking: Andy Coulson sues News of the World publisher Lawyer says contract entitles former NoW editor and Tory spin chief to continue having his legal fees paid By James Robinson guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 December 2011 10.00 EST Andy Coulson has taken News of the World publisher News Group Newspapers to the high court in an attempt to force the company to continue paying his legal fees relating to the phone-hacking affair. Coulson is suing News International subsidiary News Group Newspapers over the construction of a clause within the severance agreement entered into when he resigned as News of the World in January 2007. His counsel, James Laddie, told Mr Justice Supperstone at the high court in London on Wednesday that Coulson's contract included an agreement to pay the cost of any "regulatory, administrative, judicial or quasi-judicial" legal action he might face. "What the parties were trying to do was cover all bases," he said. Tom Mockridge, the chief executive of News International, NGN's owner, wrote to Coulson on 23 August to say it would no longer meet the cost of his legal fight. Coulson, who resigned as David Cameron's communications chief at the start of the year, has been questioned by police over phone hacking and illegal payments to police, Laddie confirmed. "I should make it clear at this stage that the claimant [Coulson] denies any allegations of wrongdoing," he said. Laddie added that NGN's broad position was that, whatever the clause meant, it did not cover criminal allegations. However, he argued that Coulson's contract of employment made it clear News International would pay the legal fees arising from cases brought against him as a result of his job as editor of the now defunct News of the World. "It doesn't matter whether he performs his duties well or badly," Laddie said. "There's no need to refer to the duties of the employee at all. He has been questioned about his role in phone hacking and, as everybody knows, communications were intercepted for the purposes of obtaining material for publication, or for verifying material for publication. "The matters about which the claimant has been questioned are matters which fall within the scope of his employment." Laddie told the high court that any legal action taken against Coulson arising from his role as editor triggered a legal indemnity NI is obliged to meet. "In any case where legal proceedings are even mooted there is an allegation of unlawful conduct," he said. If it could be argued that certain categories of offences were not covered by the indemnity, Laddie added, "the indemnity would be robbed of all effect". He added that NI had already admitted it is "vicariously liable" for the actions of Glenn Mulcaire and Clive Goodman, the former private investigator and ex-News of the World royal editor, and that it has paid phone-hacking victims compensation for their crimes. Laddie said: "[Coulson]'s not being paid to break the law, of course not. An employee is employed to act lawfully. "Of course there's an allegation of wrongdoing but it's obvious it's in both parties' interests to have the claimant have access to good legal advice … Any sins of Mr Coulson might also be visited upon the defendant." It also emerged during Wednesday's hearing that NI is meeting any costs Coulson might incur arising out of the Leveson inquiry into press standards. Christopher Jeans QC, for News International, said the clause in Coulson's contract was drafted to protect the former editor from paying legal costs relating to his duties as editor. They included libel actions, appearances before parliamentary select committees or costs arising from being the subject of press complaints, he added. "We submit that this is a clearly [constructed] clause and on no reading covers personal criminal wrongdoing," Jeans said. He added that the clause was intended to cover the "occupational hazards" of being an editor. "It plainly doesn't include criminal allegations directed against the editor personally." Jeans said such a clause would compel the company to pay Coulson's legal fees if he had been convicted of expenses fraud or damaging company property. "Where is the limit?" he asked. "It can't simply be that the conduct occurred whilst he was editor. It can't be the case that anything in the contract anticipated unlawful payments to police officers or interception of telephone conversations." Jeans told the high court: "He himself does not [claim] that those things were part of his job. It was no part of his function to do the things of which he is accused. "The indemnity only applies to the functions of editor. It was no part of Mr Coulson's functions to make unlawful payments to police officers or to intercept telephone conversations." Asked by the judge whether News International itself could be liable for Coulson's actions should he be convicted of either crime, Jeans said: "There has certainly been no allegation against the employer. The editor is not a director of the company."

[This column is a revelation on the topic] The Obama Regime Has No Constitutional Scruples by Paul Craig Roberts www.lewrockwell.com December 6, 2011 During an interview with RT on December 1, I said that the US Constitution had been shredded by the failure of the US Senate to protect American citizens from the detainee amendment sponsored by Republican John McCain and Democrat Carl Levin to the Defense Authorization Bill. The amendment permits indefinite detention of US citizens by the US military. I also gave my opinion that the fact that all but two Republican members of the Senate had voted to strip American citizens of their constitutional protections and of the protection of the Posse Comitatus Act indicated that the Republican Party had degenerated into a Gestapo Party. These conclusions are self-evident, and I stand by them. However, I jumped to conclusions when I implied that the Obama regime opposes military detention on constitutional grounds. Ray McGovern and Glenn Greenwald might have jumped to the same conclusions. An article by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate reported that the entire Obama regime opposed the military detention provision in the McCain/Levin amendment. Lithwick wrote: "The secretary of defense, the director of national intelligence, the director of the FBI, the CIA director, and the head of the Justice Department’s national security division have all said that the indefinite detention provisions in the bill are a bad idea. And the White House continues to say that the president will veto the bill if the detainee provisions are not removed." I checked the URLs that Lithwick supplied. It is clear that the Obama regime objects to military detention, and I mistook this objection for constitutional scruples. However, on further reflection I conclude that the Obama regime’s objection to military detention is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens. The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war. As Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it: Should somebody determined "to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? The answer is yes." Detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights. These rights would interfere with the regime’s ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas. This is what the Obama regime means when it says that the requirement of military detention denies the regime "flexibility." The Bush/Obama regimes have evaded the Geneva Conventions by declaring that detainees are not POWs, but "enemy combatants," "terrorists," or some other designation that removes all accountability from the US government for their treatment. By requiring military detention of the captured, Congress is undoing all the maneuvering that two regimes have accomplished in removing POW status from detainees. A careful reading of the Obama regime’s objections to military detention supports this conclusion. The November 17 letter to the Senate from the Executive Office of the President says that the Obama regime does not want the authority it has under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Public Law 107-40, to be codified. Codification is risky, the regime says. "After a decade of settled jurisprudence on detention authority, Congress must be careful not to open a whole new series of legal questions that will distract from our efforts to protect the country." In other words, the regime is saying that under AUMF the executive branch has total discretion as to who it detains and how it treats detainees. Moreover, as the executive branch has total discretion, no one can find out what the executive branch is doing, who detainees are, or what is being done to them. Codification brings accountability, and the executive branch does not want accountability. Those who see hope in Obama’s threatened veto have jumped to conclusions if they think the veto is based on constitutional scruples. December 6, 2011 Paul Craig Roberts [send him mail], a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.

Former CIA Director's Death Raises Questions, Divides Family First Posted: 12/ 5/11 07:38 PM ET Updated: 12/ 5/11 07:38 PM ET www.huffingtonpost.com [view video] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/05/former-cia-directors-death-raises-questions-divides-family_n_1130176.html WASHINGTON -- A new film on the life and death of master spy and former CIA director William E. Colby, created by his son, raises the question of whether the man who pioneered U.S. counterinsurgency warfare may have ended his own life -- a question that has divided the intelligence community and Colby's family. Colby developed the strategy of training and arming local troops to assist with counterinsurgency during the Vietnam War -- the same tactic in use today by U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. But as former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft speculates in the film, "The Man Nobody Knew," Colby's role in the creation of U.S. counterintelligence programs in the Vietnam War may have contributed to his suffering "a tortured soul." If this alleged remorse were real, and had any connection to Colby's death, it could cast a shadow over the early history of U.S. counterinsurgency. When Colby vanished in rough waters on a late-night, solo canoe trip in 1996, local sheriffs ruled out suicide before they even found his body. A lifetime of espionage meant Colby had enemies from Baltimore to Bali, and conspiracy theories about his death still circulate between Georgetown mansions and CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., today, despite an official ruling of accidental death. Up to this point, conspiracy theories have focused mainly on the possibility of foul play -- not on suicide. But this may be changing. Fifteen years after Colby drowned in Maryland's Wimlico River, his son, filmmaker Carl Colby, has produced a documentary about him, "The Man Nobody Knew." The film portrays his father as a man who was wracked with guilt over his actions in the Vietnam War, and whose life fell apart after he left the CIA in 1975. By the time William Colby took his canoe out for one last trip, Carl says "he had had enough of this life." A narrative that suggests the possibility of suicide is convenient for the film, but for the rest of the Washington-based Colby clan, Carl's public revision of their father's death is painful, and they strongly believe, inaccurate. Carl Colby's film presents an alternative to the medical examiner's report. "[My father's] death was ruled an accident -- a stroke or a heart attack -- but I think he was done. He didn't have a lot left to live for. And he never wanted to grow old," Carl told Vanity Fair. But interviews with family members and with Colby's biographer, Randall Woods, paint a very different picture of William Colby's emotional life than Carl's movie does. They portray him as a straightforward, unrepentant soldier who did what he felt was necessary without agonizing too much over the costs. Colby's family also provided The Huffington Post with the coroner's report, which has never been released before, available here. The Coroner's Report "I respect my brother's movie, but the implication that my father took his life is not correct, and we felt it was important for people to see the final report of how he died in writing," Jonathan Colby, William Colby's eldest son, said in an interview at his downtown D.C. office Thursday. The official cause of death is listed as "drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease," meaning that either a stroke or a heart attack debilitated Colby, who was 76 years old, and caused him to fall out of the canoe into the freezing water, where he drowned. Carl Colby, meanwhile, told The Washington Post that his father "had had enough long before [he drowned]." Asked whether he believes his father committed suicide, Carl was cryptic, though his movie carries strong implications. "I think he just got tired," he said. But Colby had severe plaque buildup in his arteries, and not just any arteries: specifically the left, anterior descending artery -- known for producing heart attacks so massive that it's nicknamed the widow-maker. Another clue Jonathan pointed out was the fact that Colby's body was found without his shoes, likely the result of his kicking the water, and largely inconsistent with suicide, he said. Colby's Private Life Carl Colby and his siblings also hold deeply divergent opinions about what kind of person their father was. Throughout the film, Carl focuses on the impenetrable and complicated "Rubik's cube" that he believed his father to be. Carl did not include any of his siblings in the film, telling HuffPost, "everyone has their own story to tell; this is simply mine." Yet the film only presents Carl's version of his father's life and death. Furthermore, William Colby was a public figure who had an impact on American history, so the story that Carl calls "simply mine" is in fact much bigger. One sister, the late Catherine Colby, figures prominently into a narrative suggesting that remorse may have been a motive in Colby's death. Catherine suffered from epilepsy and died in 1973, at age 24. Carl says that "while she was alive, [her father] was never there for her." But 23 years after her death and two weeks before their father's final canoe trip, Carl Colby says his father called him "seeking absolution for his not doing enough when Catherine was so ill." The film is dedicated to Catherine's memory, and the implication is that William Colby was wracked by guilt over her death. But it's difficult to reconcile this narrative with another line in the movie, where Carl, the narrator, says of his father, "I'm not sure he ever loved anyone; I never heard him say anything heartfelt." Colby's Public Life Among historians, William Colby is best-remembered as the man who gave away the CIA's "family jewels," details about covert actions the agency carried out between 1950 and the end of the Vietnam War. Colby was ordered to release them to Congress as part of the Church Committee hearings of 1975, but many of his colleagues at the time considered it a major betrayal. In "The Man Nobody Knew," Scowcroft, then the National Security Advisor, speculates that giving up the information was a form of penance Colby performed to absolve his "tortured soul" of sins he believed were committed during the war. But Colby's family disagrees. "My father saw how the country was changing after Watergate, with a weak White House and a powerful Congress, and he believed that a covert intelligence agency could exist with congressional oversight," Jonathan said. Bridge Colby, Jonathan's son, added that "the release of the family jewels was the only way he knew to save the agency, in effect showing Congress, 'Look, this is all we did, nothing more!'" "For him, the world was very black and white. He fought the Nazis in Europe and then fought the Communists in Vietnam, and as far as he was concerned, these were not good people, full stop," Jonathan said. "Was he introspective? In a word, no." The program Colby pioneered in Vietnam was known as the Phoenix program, and it armed Vietnamese soldiers and helped them root out suspected Communist insurgents -- much like American intelligence agents do today by training Afghan soldiers to find and fight al Qaeda militants. But the plan resulted in the deaths of more than 20,000 Vietnamese villagers at the hands of their countrymen, leading human rights activists to liken it to a U.S.-backed assassination program. But Jonathan Colby compared civilian deaths in the Phoenix program to President Obama's use of CIA drones in the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have unintentionally killed civilians, alongside their intended targets: members of al Qaeda's leadership. "Do people think Obama and Gen. [David] Petraeus are 'tortured souls' over this?" he asked rhetorically. "Of course not." Randall Woods spent the past seven years studying Colby's life for his upcoming biography, "America's Jesuit: William Egan Colby and the CIA," which contains interviews with hundreds of Colby's friends and colleagues. Woods also dismisses the idea that the career spy had deeply-buried guilt over his family or his decisions in Vietnam. "In terms of his emotional and psychological life, there's nothing else here than what you see," Woods told HuffPost. "This was a well-intentioned, decent guy who loved adventure, and whose greatest fault was his naivete." After The CIA Woods also disputes another claim Carl Colby makes in "The Man Nobody Knew": that William Colby was "very bitter and angry" when then-President Gerald Ford fired him in 1975. Jonathan Colby agrees with Woods, and he recalls his father neither bitter nor broken-up when Ford replaced him with future president George H.W. Bush. "He actually stayed on for three months after Ford canned him, unlike [then-Defense Secretary James] Schlesinger, who was fired the same day as my father was, and who walked out right away." Schlesinger was replaced by a young Donald Rumsfeld, who would face the same challenge in Afghanistan post-9/11 as Colby and Schlesinger had in Vietnam: How to wage a guerilla war for the hearts and minds of rural villagers with an army designed for massive, scorched-earth combat ops. For his part, however, William Colby did not seem to suffer from the kind of mental anguish that would drive a man to suicide, his son Jonathan said. "With all that happened in the Vietnam years," he said, "what's really striking to me is why he wasn't tortured by it more."

News Group asked about lawyer's children By Sam Marsden The Independent Tuesday 06 December 2011 [View video] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/news-group-asked-about-lawyers-children-6273003.html The News of the World's publishers inquired about the price of obtaining information about the young children of a lawyer for alleged phone-hacking victims, the Leveson Inquiry heard today. Charlotte Harris described seeing documents that revealed how she was put under surveillance by News Group Newspapers (NGN) and contained private details about her family. She said it was natural as a mother to feel "terribly uncomfortable" about the idea of people investigating her children, who were aged two and four at the time. Ms Harris, who represents alleged hacking victims including Ulrika Jonsson, former Lib Dem MP Mark Oaten and sports agent Sky Andrew, said she was given an insight into her clients' lives after learning a private detective had spied on her. "One of the difficulties with surveillance, and I hear this from clients but I also speak for myself, is you don't really know what happened when," she said. "It is what you don't know that can cause stress. That in itself might be a new form of harassment to look into." The media lawyer, of leading London firm Mishcon de Reya, told the inquiry into press standards she first learned in May that she had been placed under surveillance. She contacted Simon Greenberg, director of corporate affairs for NGN's parent company News International, who in September informed her that he had uncovered more papers relating to what happened. Ms Harris said in a witness statement: "The documents contain comments on my private life and that of my family, for example private information contained within an email from (NGN solicitor) Julian Pike to a private investigator in May 2010, and further emails about the price of obtaining information relating to my children, then aged two and four. "There can be no justification for this conduct. The motive was to attempt to discredit those solicitors who were conducting the phone-hacking cases. "The reports were prepared in order to find a way of stopping us acting in these cases." The inquiry heard that NGN suspected Ms Harris and fellow media lawyer Mark Lewis of exchanging confidential information gained by acting for Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor in his civil damages claim over the hacking of his phone by the now-defunct News of the World. Ms Harris strongly denied this suggestion, adding: "They were not keen on the fact that having done a phone hacking case, that we should continue to do phone hacking cases." She questioned why NGN did not complain to her, her law firm or the Law Society if they had concerns about her conduct. "To take out surveillance on me and my kids or family members, to find out which of my siblings I lived with in what year - that kind of information, I don't see how that can possibly help them," she said. She also said that Tom Crone, the News of the World's former head of legal, was "absolutely wedded" to the defence that phone hacking at the News of the World was limited to a single "rogue reporter". Clive Goodman, the paper's former royal editor, was jailed along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire in January 2007 after they admitted intercepting voicemail messages left on royal aides' phones. Ms Harris said: "It was always Tom Crone's position that apart from in this case where there had been one rogue reporter, there was no evidence." Meanwhile, a Guardian journalist today defended his hacking of an arms company executive's phone as "perfectly ethical". David Leigh, the paper's investigations executive editor, admitted in an article published after Goodman pleaded guilty in December 2006 that he felt a "voyeuristic thrill" in listening to the voicemail messages. He wrote: "I, too, once listened to the mobile phone messages of a corrupt arms company executive - the crime similar to that for which Goodman now faces the prospect of jail. "The trick was a simple one: the businessman in question had inadvertently left his pin code on a print-out and all that was needed was to dial straight into his voicemail. "There is certainly a voyeuristic thrill in hearing another person's private messages. "But unlike Goodman, I was not interested in witless tittle-tattle about the royal family. I was looking for evidence of bribery and corruption. "And unlike the News of the World, I was not paying a private detective to routinely help me with circulation-boosting snippets." Giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry today, Mr Leigh said: "I don't hack phones normally. I have never done anything like that since and I had never done anything like that before. "On that particular occasion, this minor incident did seem to me perfectly ethical." Mr Leigh said he would prefer it if there was an explicit public interest defence to the criminal offence of illegally intercepting communications. But he suggested that the director of public prosecutions (DPP) would not in practice have brought charges against him. He told the inquiry: "I like to think that if the incident I have described there came to the attentions of the DPP, and I was asked about it, the DPP would conclude that there was no public interest in seeking to prosecute me or another person for doing something like that. "That is a backstop that the law has to stop it making an ass of itself." Mr Leigh added: "A journalist ought to be prepared to face up to the consequences of what they have done. "If I do something that I think is OK in the public interest, I have to be prepared to take the consequences." The inquiry also heard today from Steven Nott, who said he tried to warn the authorities about phone hacking in 1999. Mr Nott, a delivery driver from Cwmbran, South Wales, discovered how easy it was to access other people's voicemails remotely when he needed to pick up messages from customers while Vodafone's network was down. He contacted the mobile phone company, who informed him he could pick up his voicemails by phoning his own mobile number and entering a default PIN number. Mr Nott told the inquiry: "I thought to myself, 'this is insecure' straightaway. "I then said to the lady at customer services, 'If this is the case, I could ring anybody's phone up using the same method and access their voicemail'. "She said: 'Yes, you could, but you're not supposed to'." Mr Nott said he told journalists at the Daily Mirror and The Sun about the security loophole, but they did not run stories. He said he also contacted official agencies including Scotland Yard, MI5, the Home Office, the former Department of Trade and Industry, and the former HM Customs and Excise, but none of them replied.

Leveson Inquiry: Private eye hired to spy on stars The Independent Sam Marsden, Rosa Silverman Monday, 05 December 2011 Journalists commissioned a private detective to find out personal details about sportsmen and celebrities including Hugh Grant and his former girlfriend Liz Hurley, the Leveson Inquiry heard today. Records seized from investigator Steve Whittamore in 2003 contained a "veritable treasure trove" of information about how newspapers ordered searches on everything from addresses to criminal records, the hearing was told. The paperwork includes references to investigations into members of a UK national sports team and a "B&B sex party". Whittamore was asked to do an address search for Grant and Hurley in south London and a vehicle registration mark (VRM) check relating to the Love Actually star, the press standards inquiry heard. Alec Owens, senior investigating officer for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) from 1999 until 2005, recalled: "We went to see Mr Grant at his offices because a VRM comes up against his name. "As it turned out he couldn't recall this and possibly thought he may have been in a friend's car or talking to somebody standing by that car." One newspaper paid £800 in 2002 for the June 2001 phone bill of an unnamed sports star from a national side, the inquiry was told. Whittamore's Hampshire home was raided in March 2003 as part of a major ICO investigation into the illegal purchase of confidential information called Operation Motorman. The private detective was convicted in 2005 of illegally accessing data and passing it to journalists. Robert Jay QC, counsel for the inquiry, said there was a "veritable treasure trove" of information in Whittamore's files. Inquiry chairman Lord Justice Leveson added: "Mr Whittamore had collected together a vast amount of personal data. "The documents identify the names of titles, specify journalists at the titles apparently or inferentially making the requests. "It identifies the names of people from a wide range of public life and in the public eye, and provides addresses, telephone numbers, mobile telephone numbers and charging details for that information." The records show that Whittamore charged £17.50 for an "occupancy search" to discover who lived at a particular address, £30 for an "area search" to find out where a person lived, and about £75 for an ex-directory telephone number search. Newspapers paid £75 for getting the address linked to a mobile number and £150-200 for a vehicle registration search. Whittamore would write "occupancy" on paperwork that he sent to his accountant for tax purposes when in fact it related to ex-directory phone number searches, while invoices sent to newspapers often just read "confidential inquiries", the hearing was told. Mr Owens said: "In the main it was just 'confidential inquiries'. He (Whittamore) wouldn't tell us and we never got the opportunity to ask any members of the press what they might have been." Singer Charlotte Church told the inquiry last week that she was contacted by police when she was 19 over Operation Motorman. She said in a witness statement: "I was shown an enormous book which included transcripts of telephone calls as well as addresses, car registration details, and information from criminal records. "There was a huge amount of information, and I am not sure what became of it." The inquiry has heard that former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas did not pursue investigations against any journalists, despite the wealth of evidence unearthed. Today it emerged that Mr Thomas had also been warned that even editors could be implicated. Counsel giving him written advice on whether there were grounds for bringing legal action said: "Having regard to the sustained and serious nature of the journalistic involvement in the overall picture, there could be little doubt that many, perhaps all, of the journalists committed an offence. "It seems to me that several editors must have been well aware of what their staff were up to and therefore party to it." But counsel went on to note that this was apparently "the first occasion on which the scale of the problem has come to light". And they suggested that "it may not be unreasonable to give the Press Complaints Commission the chance to put their house in order". Mr Owens told the inquiry last week that the former deputy head of the ICO said the media groups were also "too big" for the office to take on. Told of the paper trail apparently connecting newspapers with the illegal purchase of confidential information, Francis Aldhouse was alleged to have said with a look of horror on his face: "We can't take them on, they're too big for us." But, giving evidence today, Mr Aldhouse denied he had ever said any such thing. That was "simply not my view", he said, and "certainly not the sort of language I would use". And he insisted he did not fear the media. "Not only do I have no recollection of saying that, it's simply the sort of thing I would not say and does not reflect my views or indeed my previous practice of dealing with the media," he said. He also claimed he had no recollection of having a meeting with Mr Thomas and Mr Owens at which the latter explained what material he had found. "I can't recall such a meeting," he said. "If there was a meeting, it would have been a very casual one and a very short one and certainly not a scope for a full briefing." He also denied seeing the contents of Whittamore's notebooks. Asked whether he had discussions with Mr Thomas about what policy they would adopt on how the issue should be investigated and pursued, he said: "I do recall that Richard Thomas decided he wanted to pursue the route of going to the Press Complaints Commission and writing to (then chairman) Sir Christopher Meyer. "I think that was Mr Thomas's decision, rather than the result of some discussion." He described the Commissioner as a "one-man band", adding: "If the Commissioner decides to take a route, so be it." Had he seen in 2003 the information laid out as it had been today, his view would have been that "we really ought to find a way of pursuing this", he said. He was "not quite sure whether we could have put together the resource to handle such an investigation", he said. But he added: "I do think there was a case for taking the involvement of journalists and newspapers further." However, there would have been practical difficulties in pursuing newspapers as part of Operation Motorman, Mr Aldhouse went on. He told the inquiry: "Why should a journalist respond to our request for interview? "The commissioner has no power of arrest, has no power to compel people to speak to him. "We would be seeking to interview journalists presumably as prospective defendants to a criminal action. "They would have to be cautioned. A well-advised journalist would simply say nothing." Newspapers may also have been able to mount a public interest defence, Mr Aldhouse suggested. Referring to some of the people whose "friends and family" phone numbers were obtained by Whittamore, Lord Justice Leveson observed: "If you were going to say there's a public interest in looking at those, you might as well then say that data protection doesn't run to journalists." Mr Aldhouse replied: "There are those who think that the legislation was constructed to achieve just what you are saying." PA

Controversy still swirls around rifle used in JFK assassination By Greg Kendall-Bell Abilene Reporter-News Tue, 11/22/2011 - 3:47pm http://www.standard.net/stories/2011/11/22/controversy-still-swirls-around-rifle-used-jfk-assassination#.Ttv5wbHq8_c.facebook ABILENE, Texas -- Wayne Dorothy was reading his Sunday Abilene Reporter-News when he almost fell out of his chair, he said. On Page 8A, in black and white, was a photo of part of a letter Gene Boone wrote to Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker on Nov. 22, 1963. Boone was a Dallas sheriff's deputy when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. On the day of the shooting, Boone discovered a rifle later linked to Lee Harvey Oswald on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. As part of his duties, Boone said, he was required to notify the sheriff of anything peculiar that occurred during his shift. So he wrote his "Decker letter" saying he had been involved in the search of the building, and had found what "appeared to be a 7.65 Mauser with a telescope sight on the rifle." That's what nearly unseated Dorothy. "That was the first document I've ever seen -- from someone who was there -- that indicated the rifle they found was a Mauser, not a Mannicher-Carcano," Dorothy said. The exact make and model of the rifle is one of the controversies that continue to swirl around Kennedy's assassination 48 years after the fact. Dorothy, who is the director of bands at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, said he became interested in the various theories surrounding Kennedy's death while teaching in Tennessee in 1984. While the band director at Abilene's Tullahoma High School, Dorothy said he attended a continuing education course about the assassination taught by the high school's head football coach. "He had always enjoyed reading about the assassination, and ever since taking his course, I've been fascinated," Dorothy said. For almost 30 years, Dorothy and his father, who also is an armchair assassination enthusiast, have amassed a large library of films, videos and books on the topic. The more than 40 books Dorothy currently owns is just a tiny portion of the corpus of material that exists pertaining to just what happened in Dealey Plaza in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. "There are theories out there that run the gamut from absolute crackpot to more sober ideas," Dorothy said. "You have some real nuts, and you have serious scientists weighing in on it." Dorothy said he has his own questions about the case, but he doesn't think they will ever be fully resolved. "There's enough variation in all the theories out there that I don't think we'll ever be able to prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt. Look, we have two different official government reports (the 1964 Warren Commission report and the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations report) that basically contradict each other," he said. The Warren Commission ultimately decided that Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman, and that gunman was Lee Harvey Oswald. The House Select Committee reported that it was likely Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy. Boone, who found the rifle, said he doesn't put much stock in conspiracy theories. He said he believes the Warren Commission's finding that only one shooter was involved. "But, because of the political climate at the time, if it ever came out that there was a conspiracy, I wouldn't be surprised," Boone said. "If there was a conspiracy, I'd say it involved getting Oswald into the right place at the right time." Any possible conspiracy could only have involved a handful of people, Boone said, "otherwise, something would have come out already." Dorothy said he doesn't believe Oswald was the lone assassin, and that he doubts whether he even fired a single round. The amount of metal recovered from bullet fragments raises doubts about the number of shots fired, he said. Discrepancies between official medical reports from Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and the official autopsy performed in Maryland several days later need to be explained, he said. But as for the rifle, identified initially as a German Mauser then later as an Italian infantry rifle? "Well, I was mistaken," Boone said. He said he used the term "Mauser" to describe the weapon -- which he only saw from two to three feet away -- as a bolt-action rifle, not the particular brand. Dorothy, however, is skeptical. "The very first information out of Dallas said the rifle was a Mauser. Then it all changed, and it was said to be a Mannlicher-Carcano. How did three police officers all misidentify it?" he said. "You know, the more I read about the assassination, the more questions I tend to have," he said.

This blog covers the various key dates: http://johndelanewilliams.blogspot.com/2010/11/don-reynolds-testimony-and-lbj.html

Gassy Knoll: Dark Forces Silencing JFK Conspiracy Folk Dallas is playing to its City of Hate stereotype for assassination's anniversary. By Jim Schutze published: December 01, 2011 Dallas Observer http://www.dallasobserver.com/2011-12-01/news/gassy-knoll-dark-forces-silencing-jfk-conspiracy-folk/ The 50th anniversary of the murder of President John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza is still two years off, but somebody is already trying to shut down the plaza for the entire week of November 22, 2013. I'm not sure who yet. It's either the Sixth Floor Museum or City Hall. This follows a decades-old campaign by the city to close the assassination site to so-called "conspiracy theorists" — that would be anyone who espouses a view of the assassination other than the official version purveyed by the assassination museum (Oswald did it, not Dallas). Why? Who is it who thinks this is the way for Dallas to project an appealing image of itself? In the zeitgeist of Tahrir Square and Occupy Wall Street, does someone actually believe Dallas will make itself look better by jumping with both jackboots on freedom of expression at the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination here? There's something missing. It's something somebody doesn't get. Is it about conspiracy theories? Where would America be without conspiracy theories? Take one iconic chapter, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. In the months leading up to the 50th anniversary on December 7, 1991, American and British publishing companies cranked out a river of conspiracy-theory books about the Japanese sinking of America's Pacific fleet. For a half century American schoolchildren had been taught that Japan's surprise bombing attack was what drew the United States into war, so one company reissued a book for the anniversary saying that the official version was a lie. In A Time for War, author Robert Smithy Thompson argued that long before Pearl Harbor, America had thrown the first punch by covertly assisting China against Japan. Pearl Harbor, he said, was just Japan defending itself. In Infamy: Pearl Harbor And its Aftermath, John Toland joined an entire list of authors arguing that the American military had cracked the Japanese secret codes and was reading all their mail long before Pearl Harbor. The accusation of these authors was that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted the Japanese to sink his Pacific fleet and kill 2,402 Americans so he would have an excuse to go to war. Now that's a conspiracy theory. Might as well write a book saying the Bible was written in 1952 by Lenny Bruce. In the autumn 1991 issue of MHQ, a quarterly journal of military history, David Kahn, the leading American expert on the subject of Japanese codes and Pearl Harbor, said that all of these theories were (and the wording that follows is mine, not his) complete and unadulterated bullxxxx. In his article, Kahn said the Japanese never sent out a message, coded or uncoded, that said, "Big attack on Pearl Harbor coming up December 7." The coded messages we did intercept were drops of obscure water in a vast river of intelligence — things that have special meaning only if you're looking back with the microscope of hindsight from a vantage point 50 years later, and you're trying to hawk a book. And maybe that's where a lot of conspiracy theory comes from. People get their scales of significance all whomper-jawed. You forget and turn your telescope around backwards, and all of a sudden that guy at the next table about to spear a stewed carrot on his plate looks like a Croatian malefactor on the roof across the street about to squeeze off a heat-seeking missile in your direction. But that's OK. This country was founded on the belief that we can take anybody's book standing up, even the most wrong of the wrong, and we'd much rather do that than give up our freedom of speech. And yet Dallas continues to make itself an ugly exception to this rule. I have written before about the struggles of Robert Groden, a best-selling author and recognized expert on the famous Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination, whom the city clapped in cuffs and hauled off to jail for the sin of selling his books from a table at Dealey Plaza, even though such sales were explicitly allowed under city codes in force at the time. Groden is now suing the city in federal court for violations of his basic civil rights. It was Groden's attorney, Bradley Kizzia, who informed me of the attempt to take over Dealey Plaza for the 50th. This was after an odd little story in The Dallas Morning News on October 30 — one of those weird sort of out-of-the-blue, doesn't-quite-make-sense Morning News stories you have to have a magic decoder ring to understand — about how the assassination museum never used to have anything to do with anniversaries of Kennedy's murder in Dallas, but for the 50th they were going to take over the whole thing. Why is that weird? You have to know the context. Right after the assassination, publishing companies cranked out a slew of blame-it-on-Dallas books, and some of the authors said even more pointedly that some of the blame should go to the Morning News for fomenting a right-wing screwball atmosphere. Like right-wing screwballs get that way from reading the paper. But anyway, that's what they said, so the paper has always had a thin skin about these matters. The October story in the News said, " ... to avoid the carnival atmosphere that has often prevailed at previous anniversaries on the plaza, museum officials are planning to take over commemoration activities there." It quoted assassination museum director Nicola Longford as saying: "We have reserved Dealey Plaza for that date. I think, for the 50th anniversary, we have an opportunity to offer a dignified, appropriate event for the city of Dallas." But Longford didn't seem to have much concrete detail to offer. Later in the story she said, "I don't think we know yet what will take place. It may be simply a moment of silence." OK, you ask what's wrong with "dignified" and "appropriate." What evil plot can there be in a moment of silence? I shall explain. But, first, please put this on your head. It's a tinfoil hat. Just like mine. We need to be on the same wavelength. After asking nicely for information about the planned event and being brushed off, Kizzia filed a legal demand under the Texas public records law for the application for an event permit and related correspondence and emails. What came back was a six-page document showing that the assassination museum wanted full control of all the Dealey Plaza area from November 18 through November 24, 2013, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., for seven days. For a moment of silence? A bit of arithmetic here, and I come up with a moment of silence under this formulation that would be 98 hours long. That's a heck of a lot of silence. The permit application is typed and filled out in Longford's name, but it is unsigned. Oh, now I'm really getting out into wig-land, right? Well, hold on to your tinfoil for a second. There is more. One of the emails Kizzia obtained from the city was from Jill Beam, the person in the Parks Department who hands out such permits, to a person who had asked if his own group of assassination buffs could hold their own brief moment of silence on the plaza for the 50th, as they have in years past. The sad news, apparently, was that the moments of silence were all taken. The museum, with its 98-hour moment of silence, had pretty well silenced any other moments. But here's the juicy part, conspiracy-wise. Beam tells the inquiring citizen at one point: "I am in touch with the folks from the City, who are actually requesting the site for 2013, to see exactly where they will be hosting their event." Catch that? She didn't say, "the folks from the museum." She said, "from the city." So who's behind this deal, anyway? Now here's my favorite part. I tried eight ways to Sunday to get the people at the assassination museum and the people at City Hall to talk to me about this. What did I get? I want you to guess. It's one word. It's a kind of wall. A very hard wall. Yup. I got ... Stonewalled! Oh, it's what we tinfoil hatters just live for. There's almost nothing better than getting stonewalled. It's so deeply and fundamentally confirmatory. Frank Librio, the spokesman for the city, always calls me back. Not this time. Wouldn't talk about it. Busy. Too many meetings. And, of course, it was close to Thanksgiving. People always get so crazy close to Thanksgiving. We're almost done here. Would you mind taking off that goofy hat? We need to be serious now. The accusation was always that some dark shadowy group in Dallas was behind the assassination. Dallas resented that. I understand. Dallas still wants that impression to go away. I think maybe in 50 years it probably has gone away, but some people here are still sensitive. Here's the problem. Let's say you're accused of being a dark shadowy group. The way to get out from under that accusation is not by going around behaving like a dark shadowy group. Just for example: You don't send out the jackboots to arrest authors who disagree with you. In the world of dark shadowy groups, that's called "playing to your stereotype." Here's another suggestion. Don't announce that you're going to hold a 98-hour moment of silence so nobody else can have even a 30-second moment of silence. It's just ... I don't know ... it sounds like a line from a Kurt Vonnegut novel. And what do you think will happen on November 22, 2013, anyway? I have spoken with members of some of the groups that are being shut out, and they are already kicking around the phrase "Occupy Dealey Plaza." Ah, well, maybe ... just forget it. A half century later, and we're still walking straight into it. Can't argue with destiny.

Investigator: I was barred from taking on the press The Independent Thursday, 01 December 2011 The agency responsible for protecting data privacy declined to prosecute journalists despite evidence uncovered by its senior investigator that an archive of illegally-obtained information belonging to a private investigator was used by several national newspapers, the Leveson Inquiry heard yesterday. Files removed from the Hampshire office of Steve Whittamore during a raid in March 2003 could have led to an early exposé of phone hacking. The investigator at the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), Alec Owens, told Lord Leveson that, although he had gathered enough evidence to prosecute up to 20 journalists, he was told by his superiors to drop it. Mr Owens said the ICO's deputy, Francis Aldhouse, told him "We can't take them [the newspapers] on, they're too big for us." The ICO's head, Richard Thomas, agreed. Mr Owens told the inquiry Mr Whittamore's files contained 17,500 "jobs" for newspapers to obtain information including ex-directory numbers and vehicle registrations. The evidence, said Mr Owens, was "strong enough on its own to prosecute journalists some used Whittamore 300 or 400 times". Alastair Campbell earlier told the inquiry that he had believed Cherie Blair's former style guru Carole Caplin was the source of leaks that revealed some of the secrets of the Blairs' life inside No 10. However, Tony Blair's former spinner-in-chief revealed Ms Caplin was recently told by Scotland Yard that her mobile was targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, the jailed private detective commissioned by the News of the World. In further revelations, Mr Campbell said police had told about invoices that had been found which suggested the newspaper where he had once been the political editor, the Daily Mirror, had paid a private investigator to look at him, his family and the former Labour cabinet minister Peter Mandelson. Avoiding difficult questioning of his own controversial relationship with the media during the Blair years, he claimed much of the British press were in the "last, last, last chance saloon". The solicitor behind much of the legal action that helped expose phone hacking at the NOTW told how he believed Rupert Murdoch's UK empire "sought to destroy my life and very nearly did". Mark Lewis described how the Murdoch company had ordered surveillance of him and his family. He said he had recently been shown a video of his 14-year-old daughter who had been followed at the behest of News International. The inquiry was also told of a dossier compiled by Julian Pike, a solicitor from the firm Farrar who then had NI as a client. The 2010 dossier contained information about the relationship between Mr Lewis and another solicitor involved in the Gordon Taylor case, Charlotte Harris. He said Mr Pike, and NI's former legal manager, Tom Crone, "had set out to destroy my life" because of his role in representing clients who challenged the Murdoch-owned papers. Meanwhile, the prominent Northern Ireland MP Ian Paisley Jr has claimed his mobile telephone was hacked when he was a junior minister in Belfast, calling on the Leveson Inquiry to investigate. The North Antrim Democratic Unionist MP said he was "utterly convinced" that his phone was hacked in 2008 when he was involved in planning-permission controversies which led to his ministerial resignation. He said: "I was so convinced that I wrote to the Metropolitan Police. I know they've conducted some preliminary investigations but so far have not found anything." He called on the Leveson Inquiry to take evidence in Northern Ireland. His claim follows the revelation that a computer used by the former minister Peter Hain may have been hacked while he was Northern Ireland Secretary. Under fire: Guido Fawkes The political blogger Paul Staines, who writes under the name Guido Fawkes, says he has been threatened with jail in a dispute with the Leveson Inquiry over the source of Alastair Campbell's leaked testimony, which he published online last week. Mr Staines suggested the former spin-doctor was himself ultimately responsible for the leak, after passing a draft to trusted journalists, and that he (Staines) will refuse to name any middleman. Lecturer given bail following hacking arrest A university lecturer in journalism who worked for the News of the World has been arrested and questioned over phone hacking. Bethany Usher, 31, who worked at the now-defunct Sunday tabloid and its former rival The People, was arrested at dawn on suspicion of conspiracy to intercept voicemail messages. She was later bailed until March. Ms Usher, who was young journalist of the year in 2003, was arrested, but not charged, in 2006 after trying to obtain a housekeeping job at Buckingham Palace while at the NOTW. The lecturer at Teesside University became the 17th person questioned as part of Operation Weeting, the Met investigation into phone hacking. Ms Usher has referred several times to the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter. On Tuesday, she wrote: "Am I the only former tabloid reporter who followed the PCC ? Hey kids. They the rules, stick to them."

Leveson Inquiry: 'News International tried to destroy my life,' hacking lawyer claims Daily Telegraph 5:16PM GMT 30 Nov 2011 A lawyer acting for phone hacking victims including the parents of Milly Dowler has accused Rupert Murdoch's News International of trying to "destroy" his life. Lawyer Mark Lewis was recalled to the Leveson Inquiry at the Royal Courts of Justice Mark Lewis described being shown a "truly horrific" surveillance video of his ex-wife and 14-year-old daughter shot by a private detective commissioned by the company, which published the News of the World until its closure in July. He told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards: "News International sought to destroy my life, and very nearly succeeded." Detectives showed Mr Lewis the surveillance video of his ex-wife and teenage daughter at a police station in Putney, west London, on November 4 2011. The solicitor told the inquiry that his three other daughters asked him whether they too had been watched by the investigator, who was later identified as former policeman Derek Webb. He said: "That was truly horrific, that my daughter was videoed, was followed by a detective with a camera - I mean, just followed. That shouldn't happen to anybody's child." Mr Lewis added: "The point is that video, until it was handed to the police, was sat in the offices of News International at Wapping. They should be ashamed of that. "It was horrific. I didn't expect to see that. They had no right to do that." Mr Lewis was also shown a report prepared by a private investigator commissioned by Julian Pike, a partner with law firm Farrer and Co, the inquiry heard. The media lawyer told the inquiry he was "flabbergasted" by the documents, in which he and fellow lawyer Charlotte Harris were described as "untrustworthy". "There was no probative value whatsoever in the inquiry that was being made by them," Mr Lewis said. "They were looking into my private life in a way that had no relevance whatsoever.. as to whether or not there had been an exchange of confidential information between Charlotte Harris and me. "You would have thought that a firm of solicitors, not least Farrer and Co, would turn round to the journalists and say no, don't do that, you're tampering with evidence. You're in very risky territory here. "Instead, they joined in and wanted to compare notes with the information they'd obtained. Diabolical." The inquiry heard Mr Pike suggested Mr Lewis had leaked confidential information about Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor's settlement with News Group Newspapers over the hacking of his phone. But Mr Lewis told the inquiry: "I was not the source of that story, I never gave information out. "It was complete arrogance and idiocy by Julian Pike at Farrers and (News International lawyer) Tom Crone. "They were so busy naval-gazing that they had not realised there were so many possible sources of this story. "The story was open, the court file was open for anyone to look at and because they were so arrogant and so stupid, they did not bother to look at that." Mr Lewis said any suggestion he benefited professionally from representing phone hacking victims was untrue. The inquiry was shown documents revealing that Mr Crone instructed private detectives to investigate Mr Lewis in May 2010. Another memo recorded the suggestion that Mr Taylor could be persuaded to take action against Mr Lewis, who represented him in his phone hacking claim against the News of the World. Mr Lewis said: "To suggest that News Group Newspapers wanted to persuade one of my clients, someone I had acted for, someone I had got a lot of money for, to sue me, even though he had not threatened to sue me, had no wish to sue me, as far as I knew, and did not sue me." He said the only issue between him and Mr Taylor was "nothing to do with professional conduct". The inquiry also saw a document that recorded the aim to keep Mr Lewis and fellow solicitor Charlotte Harris, who has represented other phone hacking victims, out of the cases "to reduce the negative publicity". Mr Lewis' evidence to Lord Justice Leveson followed testimonies from Alastair Campbell and Alec Owens, the former Special Branch officer who led the Information Commissioner's Operation Motorman investigation in 2003. Prime Minister David Cameron set up the Leveson Inquiry in July in response to revelations that the News of the World commissioned private detective Glenn Mulcaire to hack Milly Dowler's phone after she disappeared

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/ross-douthat-jfk_b_1117677.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#undefined

I am posting this article, which includes a video, because Daniel Sheehan in his speech declares that one of the assassins of JFK was present in the room when Robert Kennedy was later killed. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2066883/Robert-F-Kennedy-assassin-Sirhan-Sirhan-claims-victim-mind-control.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2066883/Robert-F-Kennedy-assassin-Sirhan-Sirhan-claims-victim-mind-control.html

British Inquiry Is Told Hacking Is Worthy Tool The New York Times By SARAH LYALL November 30, 2011 LONDON — He admitted that he and his colleagues hacked into people’s phones and paid police officers for tips. He confessed to lurking in unmarked vans outside people’s houses, stealing confidential documents, rifling through celebrity garbage cans and pretending that he was not a journalist pursuing a story but “Brad the teenage rent boy,” propositioning a priest. After Paul McMullan, a former deputy features editor at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid, had finished his jaw-droppingly brazen remarks at a judicial inquiry on Tuesday, it was hard to think of any dubious news-gathering technique he had not confessed to, short of pistol-whipping sources for information. Nor were the practices he described limited to a select few, Mr. McMullan said in an afternoon of testimony at the Leveson Inquiry, which is investigating media ethics in Britain the wake of the summer’s phone hacking scandal. (Indeed, on Wednesday, the British police said they had arrested a 17th suspect in investigations into the scandal — a 31-year-old woman from northern England, who was not identified by name.) In fact, Mr. McMullan said, The News of the World’s underlings were encouraged by their circulation-obsessed bosses to use any means necessary to get material. “We did all these things for our editors, for Rebekah Brooks and for Andy Coulson,” Mr. McMullan said, referring to two former News of the World editors who, he said, “should have had the strength of conviction to say, ‘Yes, sometimes you have to stray into black or gray illegal areas.’ ” He added: “They should have been the heroes of journalism, but they aren’t. They are the scum of journalism for trying to drop me and my colleagues in it.” Mr. Coulson, who resigned from his job as chief spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron in January, and Mrs. Brooks, who resigned in July from her job as chief executive of News International, the British newspaper arm of the Murdoch empire, have both been arrested on suspicion of phone hacking, or illegally intercepting voice mail messages. Mrs. Brooks, whom Mr. McMullan called “the archcriminal,” is also suspected of making illegal payments to the police. Both have repeatedly denied the allegations, and neither has yet been charged. Nothing that Mr. McMullan said was particularly surprising; anyone following the phone hacking scandal that engulfed News International and its parent, the News Corporation, over the summer is now more than familiar with outrageous tales of tabloid malfeasance. What was startling was that Mr. McMullan, who left his job in 2001, eagerly confessed to so much and on such a scale — no one else has done it quite this way — and that he maintained that none of it was wrong. Most people from the tabloid world have reacted to the revelations in the manner of Renault when discussing gambling in “Casablanca,” saying they are “shocked, shocked.” But Mr. McMullan veered so far in the other direction that at times he sounded like a satirist’s rendition of an amoral tabloid hack. Underhanded reporting techniques are not shocking at all, he said, particularly in light of how often he and his colleagues risked their lives in search of the truth. As examples of the dangers of his job, he described having cocaine-laced marijuana forced on him by knife-wielding drug dealers in a sting operation; being attacked by a crowd of murderous asylum seekers; and, in his “Brad the teenage rent boy” guise, sprinting through a convent dressed only in underpants to escape the pedophile priest he had successfully entrapped. “Phone hacking is a perfectly acceptable tool, given the sacrifices we make, if all we’re trying to do is get to the truth,” Mr. McMullan said, asking whether “we really want to live in a world where the only people who can do the hacking are MI5 and MI6.” No, he said, we do not. “For a brief period of about 20 years, we have actually lived in a free society where we can hack back,” he said. Journalists in Britain have traditionally justified shady practices by arguing that they are in “the public interest.” Asked by an inquiry lawyer how he would define that, Mr. McMullan said that the public interest is what the public is interested in. “I think the public is clever enough to decide the ethics of what it wants in its own newspapers,” he said. Referring to articles about Charlotte Church, a singer who told the inquiry this week of her distress at her family’s treatment by the tabloids, he said, “If they don’t like what you have written about Charlotte Church’s father having a three-in-a-bed with cocaine, then they won’t read it.” For all that, Mr. McMullan said that The News of the World had come to rely too much on outsiders to do work that could have easily been done by reporters, like conducting surveillance on potentially adulterous athletes. Also, he said, some of the investigators were incompetent. The year he became deputy features editor, he said, the department had a budget of £ 3.1 million — more than $4.5 million — to pay sources, buy stories and hire outsiders to find addresses, medical records and other information. “That was the joy of working for Murdoch,” he said. “They had that big pot of money.” Mr. McMullan, who now owns a pub and does occasional freelance work, spoke nostalgically of his tabloid career, seven years of it spent at The News of the World. He loved spiriting exclusive sources away “and hiding them from other journalists,” he said, as when he “spent two weeks locked in a hotel room with Princess Diana’s gym instructor in Amsterdam.” He also liked jumping in one of The News of the World’s stable of 12 cars and speeding away in pursuit of famous targets. “I absolutely loved giving chase to celebrities,” he said. “How many jobs can you have car chases in? Before Diana died, it was such good fun.” (Some celebrities liked it, too, he said. Brad Pitt “had a very positive attitude” about being pursued by crazed journalists in cars.) Mr. McMullan had brought along some illustrative materials, including a photograph of his surveillance van. He also briefly displayed a topless photograph of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in The News of the World, apparently as a way to show how easy it is to obtain racy photographs. “That’s the president of France’s wife,” he said. “It’s a little early in the day for that, Mr. McMullan,” the inquiry lawyer said. Many witnesses at the Leveson Inquiry, especially victims of the tabloids, have called for a law to protect citizens from news media intrusion. Mr. McMullan said he thought that privacy was “evil,” in that it helps criminals cover up their misdeeds. Using a Britishism for “pedophile,” he said, “Privacy is for pedos.”

Alastair Campbell 'threatened by NI executives over phone hacking' Former No 10 spin chief claims in Leveson inquiry statement he came under pressure after speaking out in TV interviews By Josh Halliday and Lisa O'Carroll guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 November 2011 09.10 EST Senior executives and journalists from News International sent aggressive messages to Alastair Campbell in 2009 after the former Downing Street spin chief spoke out about phone hacking at the News of the World. Campbell alleged in a written statement to the Leveson inquiry published on Monday that he received a series of "mildly threatening text and phone messages" from unnamed executives after he gave TV interviews about the Guardian's initial story on phone hacking at the News International title. "In July 2009, when the Guardian published a story indicating phone hacking was even more widespread than had been thought, I did a number of TV interviews saying this was a story that was not going away, that News International and the police had to grip it and come clean, that David Cameron should reconsider his appointment of Andy Coulson, and that what appeared to be emerging was evidence of systematic criminal activity on a near industrial basis at the News of the World," Campbell wrote. The "mildly threatening" messages followed immediately after that. Campbell, gave evidence at the inquiry on Wednesday, claimed that a "bullying culture" in the British press threatens anyone who dares speak out about malpractice or intimidation. "There is an element within this of a bullying culture, which states that anyone who stands up to prevailing media wisdom or refuses to accept its 'power' has to be attacked and undermined," he said. He added: "I know that Tom Watson [the MP who has pursued phone hacking] was on the receiving end of a similar and more robust approach."

British Inquiry Is Told Hacking Is Worthy Tool The New York Times By SARAH LYALL November 29, 2011 LONDON — He admitted that he and his colleagues hacked into people’s phones and paid police officers for tips. He confessed to lurking in unmarked vans outside people’s houses, stealing confidential documents, rifling through celebrity garbage cans and pretending that he was not a journalist pursuing a story but “Brad the teenage rent boy,” propositioning a priest. After Paul McMullan, a former deputy features editor at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid, had finished his jaw-droppingly brazen remarks at a judicial inquiry on Tuesday, it was hard to think of any dubious news-gathering technique he had not confessed to, short of pistol-whipping sources for information. Nor were the practices he described limited to a select few, Mr. McMullan said in an afternoon of testimony at the Leveson Inquiry, which is investigating media ethics in Britain the wake of the summer’s phone hacking scandal. On the contrary, he said, The News of the World’s underlings were encouraged by their circulation-obsessed bosses to use any means necessary to get material. “We did all these things for our editors, for Rebekah Brooks and for Andy Coulson,” Mr. McMullan said, referring to two former News of the World editors who, he said, “should have had the strength of conviction to say, ‘Yes, sometimes you have to stray into black or gray illegal areas.’ ” He added: “They should have been the heroes of journalism, but they aren’t. They are the scum of journalism for trying to drop me and my colleagues in it.” Mr. Coulson, who resigned from his job as chief spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron in January, and Mrs. Brooks, who resigned in July from her job as chief executive of News International, the British newspaper arm of the Murdoch empire, have both been arrested on suspicion of phone hacking, or illegally intercepting voice mail messages. Mrs. Brooks, whom Mr. McMullan called “the archcriminal,” is also suspected of making illegal payments to police. Both have repeatedly denied the allegations, and neither has yet been charged. Nothing that Mr. McMullan said was particularly surprising; anyone following the phone hacking scandal that engulfed News International and its parent, News Corporation, over the summer is now more than familiar with outrageous tales of tabloid malfeasance. What was startling was that Mr. McMullan, who left his job in 2001, eagerly confessed to so much and on such a scale — no one else has done it quite this way — and that he maintained that none of it was wrong. Most people from the tabloid world have reacted to the revelations in the manner of Renault when discussing gambling in “Casablanca,” saying they are “shocked, shocked.” But Mr. McMullan veered so far in the other direction that at times he sounded like a satirist’s rendition of an amoral tabloid hack. Underhanded reporting techniques are not shocking at all, he said, particularly in light of how often he and his colleagues risked their lives in search of the truth. As examples of the dangers of his job, he described having cocaine-laced marijuana forced on him by knife-wielding drug dealers in a sting operation; being attacked by a crowd of murderous asylum seekers; and, in his “Brad the teenage rent boy” guise, sprinting through a convent dressed only in underpants to escape the pedophile priest he had successfully entrapped. “Phone hacking is a perfectly acceptable tool, given the sacrifices we make, if all we’re trying to do is get to the truth,” Mr. McMullan said, asking whether “we really want to live in a world where the only people who can do the hacking are MI5 and MI6.” No, he said, we do not. “For a brief period of about 20 years, we have actually lived in a free society where we can hack back,” he said. Journalists in Britain have traditionally justified shady practices by arguing that they are in “the public interest.” Asked by an inquiry lawyer how he would define that, Mr. McMullan said that the public interest is what the public is interested in. “I think the public is clever enough to decide the ethics of what it wants in its own newspapers,” he said. Referring to articles about Charlotte Church, a singer who told the inquiry earlier this week of her distress at her family’s treatment by the tabloids, he said: “If they don’t like what you have written about Charlotte Church’s father having a three-in-a-bed with cocaine, then they won’t read it.” For all that, Mr. McMullan said that The News of the World had come to rely too much on outsiders to do work that could easily have been done by reporters, like conducting surveillance on potentially adulterous athletes. Also, he said, some of the investigators were incompetent. The year he became deputy features editor, he said, the department had a budget of £ 3.1 million — more than $4.5 million to pay sources, buy stories and hire outsiders to find addresses, medical records and other information. “That was the joy of working for Murdoch,” he said. “They had that big pot of money.” Mr. McMullan, who now owns a pub and does occasional freelance work, spoke nostalgically of his tabloid career, seven years of it spent at The News of the World. He loved spiriting exclusive sources away “and hiding them from other journalists,” he said, as when he “spent two weeks locked in a hotel room with Princess Diana’s gym instructor in Amsterdam.” He also liked jumping in one of The News of the World’s stable of 12 cars and speeding away in pursuit of famous targets. “I absolutely loved giving chase to celebrities,” he said. “How many jobs can you have car chases in? Before Diana died, it was such good fun.” (Some celebrities liked it, too, he said. Brad Pitt “had a very positive attitude” about being pursued by crazed journalists in cars.) Mr. McMullan had brought along some illustrative materials, including a photograph of his surveillance van. He also briefly displayed a topless photograph of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in The News of the World, apparently as a way to show how easy it is to obtain racy photographs. “That’s the president of France’s wife,” he said. “It’s a little early in the day for that, Mr. McMullan,” the inquiry lawyer said. Many witnesses at the Leveson Inquiry, especially victims of the tabloids, have called for a law to protect citizens from news media intrusion. Mr. McMullan said he thought that privacy was “evil,” in that it helps criminals cover up their misdeeds. Using a Britishism for “pedophile,” he said, “Privacy is for pedos.”

Leveson inquiry takes lessons in the dark arts of journalism The Guardian's Nick Davies and other journalists offer insights into how the press works and the pressures within newspapers By Roy Greenslade guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 November 2011 14.41 EST In their different ways, three witnesses – Nick Davies, Richard Peppiatt and Paul McMullan – treated Lord Justice Leveson and his team to a series of hard-nosed lessons in how journalism works. One of the features of the inquiry, in what should be called the prosecution stage of its proceedings, is its need to grasp the culture of Britain's national newspapers. If there is a measure of naivety, it is relieved by a genuine and endearing desire to understand. Davies helped by giving what amounted to a beginners' guide to the uniquely competitive state of the press. He began with geography and history. From as long ago as the creation of a national rail system and the development of suitable printing technology, a national press was able to send issues of morning papers around the UK in a single night. Next came a swift economics lesson about the London-based press, with its 11 daily and nine Sunday titles vying for audiences. Davies pointed out that the editors of the most popular papers, which rely on attracting as many readers as possible to secure advertising, were vulnerable to "a commercial imperative" in order to maximise sales. By contrast, the serious papers were under lesser pressure to ramp sales with what Davies called quickly produced, cheap content. Peppiatt gave a graphic account of what that process involved – the publishing in the Daily Star, where he was formerly a reporter, of stories that were often inaccurate, sensationalist and plagiarised. He painted a picture that many a tabloid hack, if able to tell the truth, would colour in. Reporters were required to "stand up" tips, rumours and even prejudices dictated by editors. He had done it, he said, and asked for forgiveness from his "victims" for having done so. With commendable understatement, Peppiatt said: "The Star is not a truth-seeking enterprise." So why had he and his former colleagues complied? Because, he said, a person's job depended on it. And it was a regime reinforced by bullying. Davies also spoke of an internal bullying culture, revealing that he had left the People in the 1980s because his boss at the paper "couldn't tell the difference between leadership and spite". I found myself nodding at this evidence from both men. It is undeniable that it has always been the way of things in tabloid newsrooms. Editors will, of course, deny it, even under oath. If a single lesson is learned by the Leveson inquiry from the day's proceedings, it should be this one. Tabloids are not democracies. They are dictatorships. Usually, it is proprietors who exercise control, though there are cases where editors are allowed to rule. Even when owners do hold sway, it does not necessarily mean they directly interfere in content. Much more crucial is their power over budgets, expecting editors to maintain sales while constraining their resources. That only serves to increase the ceaseless pressure on reporters to obtain crowd-pleasing, saleable stories. Peppiatt and McMullan recounted several examples of their own efforts. Davies, drawing on research for his book Flat Earth News, spoke of the dark arts employed by desperate reporters. His tutorial on ethics was excellent in its analysis of the sins of the past, and arguably the present. He was less sure-footed when it came to providing a way of preserving press freedom. He argued for the creation of a body to advise journalists before publication on whether their stories pass a public interest test and then a post-publication arbitration body to deal with complaints. Strangely, neither the inquiry's counsel, Robert Jay QC, nor Leveson thought to ask him what happens should the complainant be unsatisfied. Do people go then to the courts for compensation? And will that not lead to papers fighting legal cases, just as they do now? The evidence of misbehaviour mounts by the day at the inquiry. But finding a fix remains as elusive as ever.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/palantir-the-vanguard-of-cyberterror-security-11222011.html

The Times publishes letters-to-the-editor from readers who explain why the JFK legacy/cult justifably endures. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/opinion/why-john-f-kennedys-legacy-endures.html?ref=opinion

Phone hacking: 'NoW journalists deleted Milly Dowler voicemails' The Guardian's Nick Davies tells Leveson inquiry that private eye was 'brilliant blagger' but he only 'facilitated' paper's actions By Josh Halliday and Lisa O'Carroll guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 November 2011 09.34 EST The Guardian journalist who revealed the scale of the phone-hacking saga has told the UK inquiry into press standards that it was News of the World journalists who listened to and deleted Milly Dowler's voicemail messages, not the private investigator who worked for the paper. Nick Davies told the Leveson inquiry on Tuesday that Glenn Mulcaire was a "brilliant blagger" but was not responsible for deleting the phone messages of the murdered schoolgirl. Mulcaire last week denied involvement in deleting messages from the 13-year-old's phone while she was missing in 2002. "The facilitator was Glenn Mulcaire," Davies told Lord Justice Leveson at the Royal courts of Justice in London. "There is a misunderstanding, I think, around the way that he operates. "He does not actually, on the whole, do the listening to the messages himself. Most of that is done by the journalists themselves. Mulcaire's job was to enable them to do that where there's some problem because he's a brilliant blagger, so he could gather information, data from the mobile phone company." He added: "If you asked who hacked Milly's voicemail, the answer is that Mulcaire facilitated … but one or more News of the World journalists deleted the voicemail messages." Over 90 minutes of evidence, Davies said he had spoken to between 15 and 20 former News of the World journalists who had been "a tremendously important engine in driving the story forward", but that there were "about half a dozen" others in the industry who had helped expose the phone-hacking scandal. He told how the Guardian sent a detailed note to the parents of Milly Dowler two days before the story about the hacking of their late daughter's mobile phone was published, explaining what had been uncovered. "What we were disclosing was so important we needed to find some way of getting it in to the public domain. On the other hand, the family had been through hell … We did what we could to soften the impact by sending that detailed warning," Davies told the inquiry. The Guardian's senior investigations correspondent also revealed that he had recently – and reluctantly – given up on self-regulation of the press, saying: "I don't think this is an industry that is interested in or capable of self-regulation." He added: "The history of the [Press Complaints Commission's] performance undermines the whole concept of self-regulation, and re-reading this evidence I realise I was sticking up for self-regulation but I wouldn't any

Hacking Scandal Widens to Government Secrets, Report Says The New York Times By ALAN COWELL November 29, 2011 LONDON — Britain’s hacking scandal was reported on Tuesday to have broadened significantly into areas of national security, with the police investigating whether private detectives working for the Murdoch media empire hacked into the computer of a cabinet minister responsible for Northern Ireland. Scotland Yard declined to comment on the report in The Guardian newspaper, saying it would not be “providing a running commentary on this investigation.” The report said the police had warned Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland secretary from 2005 to 2007, that his computer and those of senior civil servants and intelligence agents responsible for the British province may have been hacked by private detectives working for News International. News International — whose chairman is James Murdoch, the 38-year-old son of the octogenarian mogul Rupert Murdoch — is a British subsidiary of News Corp., the Murdoch-owned global media empire. The British outpost has been at the center of a controversy convulsing public life here over the use of private detectives to hack into the voice mail of celebrities and less well-known people thrust into the spotlight of the news by personal tragedy. But the latest reports suggest that the scandal may be widening if it is established that classified material was also hacked from computers. British news reports on Tuesday said that Mr. Hain’s computer may have contained information about informers within Northern Ireland’s factions. Mr. Hain oversaw delicate negotiations that led to the restoration of local government for the province and the creation of a joint administration grouping its historic adversaries. The report added weight to previous hints that the intelligence community may have been targeted. A former British Army intelligence officer, Ian Hurst, had previously accused The News of the World, the weekly tabloid that the Murdochs closed as the scandal broke, of hacking into his e-mail account in search of information on confidential informants within the Irish Republican Army. Mr. Hurst had worked in Northern Ireland, running undercover operations. The BBC reported this year that his computer had been hacked and sensitive e-mails had been provided to The News of the World. Last month, The New York Times reported that at least one of the scores of lawsuits that allege phone hacking mentions classified information from Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5. A spokesman for Mr. Hain withheld comment, saying: “These are matters of national security and are subject to a police investigation so it would be inappropriate to comment.” Neither the spokesman nor the police explicitly denied the report. News International said it was “cooperating fully with the police” on all investigations, The Press Association news agency said. The hacking scandal has spurred Prime Minister David Cameron to set up a full-blown inquiry into the practices and ethics of the British news media and its relationship with the police and politicians. In recent days, the inquiry has heard testimony from a procession of celebrities ranging from the actor Hugh Grant to J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, chronicling episodes of intrusion into their private lives by reporters. While the scandal revolved initially around phone hacking, it has since broadened into the realm of interference with computers by people using so-called Trojan Horse viruses for remote access to their target’s computers. The police inquiry into alleged computer hacking is one of three police investigations affecting the Murdoch media holdings in Britain. Two of them relate to claims of phone hacking and bribery of police officers. In July, Scotland Yard added computer hacking to the list after receiving what the police called “a number of allegations regarding breach of privacy” since January when previous inquiries were reopened.