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Kate McCann felt 'violated' by newspaper By Sam Marsden, Rosa Silverman, Catherine Wylie The Independent Wednesday 23 November 2011 [View video] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/editor-berated-madeleine-mccanns-parents-6266466.html# Kate McCann told the Leveson Inquiry today that she felt like "climbing into a hole and not coming out" when the News of the World printed her intensely personal diary. She described feeling "violated" by the paper's publication of the leaked journal, which she began after her daughter Madeleine disappeared on holiday in Portugal in 2007. Mrs McCann, 43, said the diary - which was so private she did not even show it to her husband Gerry - was her only way of communicating with her missing daughter. She had just returned from church on Sunday September 14 2008 when she received a text message from a friend which read "Saw your diary in the newspapers, heartbreaking. I hope you're all right", the press standards inquiry heard. Mrs McCann recalled that this came "totally out of the blue" and left her with a "horribly panicky feeling". The News of the World had apparently obtained a translation of her diary from the Portuguese police and published it without her permission, the inquiry was told. Mrs McCann said: "I felt totally violated. I had written these words at the most desperate time of my life, and it was my only way of communicating with Madeleine. "There was absolutely no respect shown for me as a grieving mother or a human being or to my daughter. "It made me feel very vulnerable and small, and I just couldn't believe it. "It didn't stop there. It's not just a one-day thing. The whole week was incredibly traumatic and every time I thought about it, I just couldn't believe the injustice. "I just recently read through my diary entries at that point in that week, and I talk about climbing into a hole and not coming out because I just felt so worthless that we had been treated like that." Mr McCann, 43, said his wife felt "mentally raped" by the News of the World's publication of the journal under the headline: "Kate's diary: in her own words."

Poster's note: As a lawyer, I view this move by James Murdoch, orchestrated by his father, as part of a late in the game scheme to forestall/avoid criminal prosecution in the U.K. However, it appears to be increasingly likely that there will be some form of criminal charges ultimately filed in the U.S. against certain persons and segments of the Murdoch empire. Viewed as a whole, the Murdoch empire has been revealed publicly to have all the earmarks of an organized criminal conspiratorial enterprise. Unless there is criminal prosecution of some type against it, there is great fear that the Murdoch empire will at some time in the near future revert to its ancestral habits. ------------------------------------------------------- James Murdoch resigns from Sun and Times boards James Murdoch remains executive chairman of News International but leaves board of NGN, the firm subject to civil lawsuits over phone hacking By Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 November 2011 09.37 EST James Murdoch has stepped down from the boards of the immediate parent companies of the Sun and the Times, one of which is the business named as a defendant in all the phone-hacking civil lawsuits brought against the News of the World. It emerged on Wednesday that the 38-year-old resigned in September as director of News Group Newspapers – owners of the Sun and the now defunct News of the World, and Times Newspapers Ltd, home to the Times and Sunday Times – as he relocates from London to New York. News Group Newspapers is the company subject of a string of lawsuits for alleged breaches of privacy stemming from phone hacking, and it is the business unit that anybody wanting to sue either the Sun or News of the World would have to cite as a defendant in a legal case. News Corporation, the ultimate parent company, said James Murdoch's departure from the boards was essentially a tidying up exercise. It added that the son of Rupert Murdoch remains as executive chairman of News International, which is the operation that runs the company's three British newspapers. Insiders said that "nobody should read too much into the changes". They noted that James Murdoch remains on the board of a holding company NI Group Ltd and the Times editorial board whose function it is to approve the appointment of new editors of that newspaper. James Murdoch took over as executive chairman of News International in late 2007, and has been called to give evidence to parliament twice to explain why the company did not find out that phone hacking at the News of the World was more widespread in the period running up to the arrest of Glenn Mulcaire in 2006. Mulcaire carried out hacking on behalf of the newspaper.

James Murdoch departures 'may herald his exit from papers' Evening Standard (U.K.) By Gideon Spanier 23 Nov 2011 James Murdoch has dramatically quit as director of the companies that publish the Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times and analysts said he could soon sever all ties with the troubled newspaper group. The surprise move, which has seen Rupert Murdoch's son resign a string of directorships at News International, also raises questions about parent company News Corporation's commitment to its newspapers. Companies House filings show James Murdoch has stepped down from the boards of both News Group Newspapers Limited - publisher of the Sun - and Times Newspapers Limited, which operates The Times and Sunday Times. NGN used to operate the News of the World and remains embroiled in legal action over phone hacking. NI insisted that James Murdoch was not walking away from the UK newspaper arm. A spokesman said: "James Murdoch doesn't step back from NI. He remains chairman." He is also still a director of key holding company NI Group Limited and of Times Newspapers Holdings - the editorial board set up in 1981 to ensure the independence of the paper when Rupert Murdoch bought it. However, those close to Murdoch say he now has a more hands-off role. Claire Enders, analyst at Enders Analysis, said: "It may well be there's no further good from having James Murdoch as chairman of News International. "It's been clearly flagged up by John Whittingdale that the Culture, Media and Sport select committee is not satisfied by the explanations of James Murdoch even though they don't think he's been mendacious." The departures come as James Murdoch faces calls to quit as chairman of BSkyB at next week's AGM. His decision means no member of the Murdoch family now sits on the boards of the flagship UK papers. Rupert Murdoch used to be a director of NGN and TNL but stepped down after his son took over as NI executive chairman in 2007. James Murdoch has also quit at least one other subsidiary, News International Holdings. Tom Mockridge, former boss of Sky Italia who replaced Rebekah Brooks as NI chief executive in July, has taken over from him at NGN and TNL. Enders said Murdoch still faces intense pressure as the police investigate hacking at the News of the World. "He can step down from all these positions but he won't stop any of the other issues surrounding his stewardship," she said. Enders dismissed talk News Corp would sell the UK papers.

Leveson inquiry: Coogan claims Andy Coulson set him up in 'sting' Actor says former News of the World editor published details about affair despite assurances from showbiz columnist By Josh Halliday and Lisa O'Carroll guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 November 2011 11.40 EST [Link to video] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/22/leveson-inquiry-coogan-coulson-sting Steve Coogan has claimed at the Leveson inquiry that "lurid" details of his private life were revealed by the News of the World after he was set up in a "sociopathic sting" by former editor Andy Coulson and the paper's ex showbiz columnist. The actor and comedian told Lord Justice Leveson at London's high court on Tuesday that Rav Singh, the former News of the World showbiz columnist, agreed not to publish explicit details about Coogan's extra-marital affair in April 2004 if he would confirm less salacious details. "I begged him not to put in some of the more lurid details of the story, and he said if I confirmed certain aspects of the story in return he would guarantee that the more lurid details would be left out of the story," Coogan said. "I confirmed certain details for him and he gave me his word that the more embarrassing part of the story which I knew would upset my then wife's family would be omitted." However, Coogan then claimed that Coulson got in touch and said the NoW would publish all the details in the next Sunday's newspaper. "After that my manager received a phone call from Coulson that they were going to put everything in the paper," Coogan said. Coogan said that two years earlier he had received another phone call from Singh, who warned the actor he was about to be the subject of a NoW sting. "[singh told Coogan that] I was about to receive a phone call which would come from Andy Coulson's office," Coogan said. "There was a girl in Andy Coulson's office who was going to speak to me on the phone, the phone call would be recorded and she would try to entice me into talking about intimate details of her and my life." Coogan said that Singh told him to purposefully "obfuscate" on the phone, because he knew that Coulson would allegedly be listening, and no story was published. In just under two hours of testimony, Coogan told how his life had been laid bare by the tabloid newspapers over the years. "My closet is empty of skeletons as a result of the press, so unwittingly they have made me immune in some ways," he said

A LOOK BACK AT JFK: TAKING STOCK November 22, 2011 By Joseph P. Farrell http://gizadeathstar.com/2011/11/a-look-back-at-jfk-taking-stock/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GizaDeathStar+%28Giza+Death+Star%29&utm_content=FaceBook Today is the 48th anniversary of the cold-blooded murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Friday, Nov 22, 1963, at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. It is worth pausing and noting that this year saw the release by Caroline Kennedy of her mother’s tapes and diaries, in which the late Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis indicated her strong belief that Lyndon Johnson, and elements of the Texas “oil community” were involved in the assassination. It came, for me, as a bit of sad and bittersweet confirmation of the opinions that I and other researchers such as Jim Marrs, Peter Dale Scott, Zirbel, had come to, namely, that these two elements were indeed involved in the assassination. It was, by anyone’s lights, a big conspiracy, one that was, according to Oswald’s murderer Jack Ruby, larger than anyone could possibly imagine, and one that, again according to Ruby, would usher in a “new form of government”, a government essentially broadly Fascist in its ideological outlook, a kind of “sublime” fusion of corporate and governmental power. There were, I think, other elements involved in the plot, as I outline in LBJ and the Conspiracy to Kill Kennedy, Mafia, intelligence, military, big oil, banking and finance, and, yes, even the sinister shadow of the swastika cast over the whole affair, and at the pinnacle, at least as an accessory after the fact if not as an outright planner, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Most of us are now cynical of both political parties, and the unresponsiveness of our “leadership” to the public good and genuine national interest. We are, we know in our hearts, citizens of an out of control empire, projecting more and more political and military power, printing ever more monetized debt to the glee of the banksters, taking out American citizens without trial or due process by drones, and all of it, I suspect, is because the same coup-d’etat that brought this benign Fascism into the open in American culture has continued more or less apace since President Kennedy’s untimely death. Kennedy, like Eisenhower, saw the dangers of the military-industrial complex, but unlike Eisenhower, made a desperate attempt to undo at least some of it…and paid the price with his life. The stupidity of the official “Warren Report” explanation of the crime, lest we forget, remains the de facto and de jure explanation of the murder by every American president since: the goofiness of the story serving as a reminder to the sock puppets in the White House that this “can happen to you”, and every now and then, they’re given reminders: the attempts on Gerald Ford’s life, the “lone nut” attempt on Ronald Reagan, the gate-crashers at a state dinner between India’s Prime Minister and President Obama. But it isn’t a time for sadness, but rather, for reflection: most now no longer believe the Warren report nonsense; what we now need to understand, as Professor Peter Dale Scott has so ably demonstrated in his books on the assassination, is that Ruby’s statement on the vastness of the conspiracy is true, and that it is now a standard feature of the corruption in American politics.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=18398

The other Kennedy conspiracy The assassination of Robert Kennedy never received the scrutiny it deserves By Lisa Pease www.salon.com November 21,2011 http://www.salon.com/2011/11/21/the_other_kennedy_conspiracy/ Each November, the media recalls the assassination of President Kennedy and its attendant controversies. Rarely, however, is a second Kennedy anniversary acknowledged. On Nov. 20, 2011, Robert Kennedy JFKs brother and devoted political partner would have turned 86 years old had he not also been assassinated. Although the mainstream media has been all but silent on this case, the facts scream out for a deeper investigation. The story of Robert Kennedys assassination seems deceptively simple. After winning the California Democratic presidential primary on June 4, 1968, Sen. Robert Kennedy traversed a pantry at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. A young Palestinian Christian named Sirhan Sirhan pulled a gun and fired. Kennedy died roughly 25 hours later. Five others were wounded. Sirhan was tried and convicted. End of story, right? Not so fast. A crime is like a jigsaw puzzle. You cant solve the puzzle by forcing a piece where it doesnt belong. The theory that Sirhan killed Kennedy is an ill-fitting piece not supported by the physical evidence. Here are some facts that are not in dispute. Fact: The medical evidence showed that Kennedy was shot four times from behind from a distance of 1 to 6 inches. The fatal shot entered Kennedy from 1 inch behind Kennedys right ear. Fact: All witnesses placed Sirhan in front of Kennedy. Not one witness put Sirhans gun muzzle closer than a foot to Kennedy, and most witnesses placed the muzzle about 3 feet away. Based on these two facts alone, Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi wrote in his memoir, Thus I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy. Fact: Seven bullets were recovered from six pantry victims. Another bullet was lost in the ceiling space. Sirhans gun could only hold eight bullets. But an FBI agent photographed four additional bullet holes in the pantry. This so worried Los Angeles County officials that, nine years later, they asked the FBI essentially for a retraction, noting that if those were, in fact, bullet holes, as the bureau unequivocally stated, We should certainly find out who else was firing. In recent years, an audiotape recorded by Stanislaw Pruszynski, a Polish reporter covering the 1968 presidential campaign for Canadian newspapers, resurfaced that supported the FBIs finding. Sound engineer Philip Van Praag used sophisticated equipment to analyze the tape and found at least 12 shot sounds on the tape. He also found that two pairs of shots came too close together to have been fired from a single gun. The evidence clearly points to at least two shooters that night in the Ambassador pantry. In addition to the physical evidence, multiple witnesses spotted other men with drawn guns in the pantry. Fact: Richard Lubic, a televison producer, was standing behind Kennedy during the shooting. Lubic saw an arm to his right with a gun but could not see who was holding the gun. After Kennedy fell, Lubic knelt to help Kennedy and saw a security guard, Thane Eugene Cesar, with his gun drawn and pointing toward the floor. The Los Angeles Police Department later put enormous pressure on Lubic to change his story. Lubic was visited at home by LAPD investigators, who told him, Dont bring this up, dont be talking about this. Fact: Donald Schulman, a young runner for a local TV station, claimed he saw security guard Cesar fire his gun. Schulman also told the LAPD he saw three guns in the pantry. (Some authors have mistakenly suggested Schulman wasnt in the pantry, but LAPD records confirm that he was.) Fact: Sandy Serrano, a Kennedy campaign volunteer, told NBC News reporter Sander Vanocur on live TV about seeing a young woman in a polka dot dress and a male companion who had passed her on a fire escape. The woman in the polka dot dress said, We shot him, we shot him! Serrano asked whom they shot. The woman said, Senator Kennedy, and ran off. A witness in the pantry, Vincent DiPierro, told the LAPD about a woman in a white dress with dark polka dots who seemed to be holding Sirhan just before the shooting. Fact: The police were so interested in this girl in the polka dot dress that they issued an APB for her and specifically asked nearly all the witnesses interviewed whether they had seen anyone fitting her description. But when the story started to gain traction in the press, the LAPD declared that a blond girl on crutches in a bright green dress with yellow lemons dotting it was the girl in the polka dot dress and closed the book on this subject. A new novel called The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress conjures an imaginary history for this illusory character. Its a shame the novelist didnt review the actual record, as the LAPD files suggest an even more provocative back story, which has not yet appeared in print, but will, when I finish the nonfiction book Im writing about this case. If one accepts the existing evidence, at least two people were firing bullets. And if two people were shooting, not only was there a conspiracy, it was such a sophisticated one that it has eluded prosecution for over 40 years. The piece that has never fit has been Sirhan himself. Why did he never identify his co-conspirators? In addition, Sirhan has always claimed he had no memory of this crime. He had no idea why he shot Kennedy, nor did he remember writing in a notebook, over and over, RFK must die. Could Sirhan have been hypnotized? I know how crazy this sounds to people who havent studied the history of mind control. It sounds like the stuff of Hollywood fiction. (On the other hand, where do you think Hollywood gets those stories? William Bryan, a renowned hypnotist who consulted on the making of the film The Manchurian Candidate, called a radio show shortly after Kennedy was shot to suggest Sirhan had been hypnotically programmed.) Several witnesses, including some of the Los Angeles police officers who interacted with Sirhan immediately after the shooting, commented on Sirhans preternatural calmness before, during and after the shooting. LAPD officer Randolph Adair said in later years, The guy was real confused. It was like it didnt exactly hit him what he had done. He had a black, glassed-over look on his face like he wasnt in complete control of his mind at the time. Both Sirhans defense team and the prosecution tried and failed to get Sirhan to recall shooting Kennedy under hypnosis. Both, however, presumed his guilt and tried to get him to admit it while in a trance, which Sirhan never did. Sirhans current attorney, William Pepper, recently had an expert hypnotize Sirhan in an open-ended fashion, during which Sirhan finally recalled that the touch of a girl in the pantry sent Sirhan into a mode where he thought he was firing at a target on a range. Could the girl in a polka dot dress DiPierro saw holding Sirhan moments before the shooting began have triggered his act? On Channel 4 in the U.K. last month, hypnotist Derren Brown tested this scenario on his TV show The Experiments. He took a highly hypnotizable subject and, over a two-month period, trained him to shoot and kill a celebrity. The subject, however, did not know this was the experiments goal. Brown gave his subject a two-part trigger that would send him into a hypnotic state: a polka dot pattern and a unique cellphone ring tone. When he saw this pattern and heard the tone, the young man was taught to touch his head to focus his concentration, and then fire a gun at a target on a range. But his final test occurred not at a range, but at a taping of British entertainer Stephen Frys show. As the subject watched the show from a back row, a hidden camera showed a girl in a polka dot dress enter and sit in front of the subject. The cellphone rang. The girl turned to the subject and whispered, The target is Stephen Fry. The subject hesitated a moment, then touched his forehead, opened the case, pulled out a gun loaded with blanks, stood, and fired. Stephen Fry, who was wired with squibs (the exploding fake blood packets used in movies to simulate gunshots), fell down dead. The hypnotized man showed no reaction at the time. When shown a video of his act later, the subject seemed genuinely surprised at what he had done. If Sirhan was hypnotized, is there any chance he could be innocent of the crime, as his current lawyers are pleading? While Im not aware of any American precedent to such a claim, there was a similar case in Denmark in the 1950s. Palle Hadrup, who had committed a murder, was charged only with temporary insanity because the jury believed he had killed under the hypnotic influence of another man, a hardened criminal who directed Hadrup to commit crimes. Robert Kennedy had many enemies, but which of them were capable of such a sophisticated plot? Could the mob have hypnotized Sirhan? Could Aristotle Onassis have suppressed the FBIs evidence of conspiracy? Could Jimmy Hoffa have made sure that no troubling facts about the case were ever presented to a jury? Who had that kind of power? The CIA had strong relationships with the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office, and L.A. county officials. The CIA had enormous influence over the media, including national coverage of both Kennedy assassinations, as Carl Bernsteins explosive October 1977 expose in Rolling Stone magazine later demonstrated. Even powerful FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover had never been able to rein in the CIA. If anyone had the power to pull this off and completely cover their tracks, it would be a small handful of people from the covert side of the agency. Perhaps most significantly, the CIA was, by 1968, extremely experienced in various mind-control scenarios that involved drugs, hypnosis and a combination of the two. One of the CIAs initial forays into this area came through a project code-named ARTICHOKE. One ARTICHOKE document presents the question: Can an individual … be made to perform an act of attempted assassination involuntarily under the influence of ARTICHOKE? This program later evolved into the MKULTRA program, an umbrella designation for hundreds of experiments that involved drugs, hypnosis and biological and chemical warfare. But why would the CIA want to kill Robert Kennedy? Werent they in bed together on the Castro assassination plots when RFK was serving as his brothers gung-ho attorney general? Thats a widely believed myth. The 1967 CIA Inspector General report on the anti-Castro plots explicitly asks, Can CIA state or imply that it was merely an instrument of policy? and answers, Not in this case, explaining that while RFK was informed of plots against Castro from the past, he was not informed of the plots that were continuing. During his brothers administration, Robert was a constant thorn in the CIAs side. After the agencys disastrous Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961, President Kennedy asked his brother to closely monitor the CIA, which infuriated the operatives who had for years prided themselves on their independence from authority. After RFK was elected to the Senate from New York in 1964 and became a growing critic of the war in Vietnam and the Johnson administration, the CIA began to keep a close watch on him. Fact: The CIA was so concerned about Robert Kennedy in the last year of his life that it put spying on him on a par with spying on the Soviet Union, according to a report in the Washington Post after it obtained this data. Perhaps the CIA was also anxious about RFK because, as David Talbot (the founder and current CEO of Salon) recounted in his 2007 book, Brothers, Robert Kennedy harbored suspicions about the CIAs possible complicity in his brothers death. One of Roberts first calls after JFKs assassination was to the CIA to ask if the agency had killed his brother. If members of the CIA were involved in the death of JFK, could they afford to let Robert ascend to an office where hed have the power but to do something about that? Im well aware that extraordinary claims deserve extraordinary evidence. I have much more to support what Ive said here, which I am laying out in book form. I hope only to have cracked your mind open, because Occams Razor fails us when the simplest explanation is the carefully planned cover story. Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Howard once said of Sirhan, If he isnt guilty, its the sweetest frame in the world. I think Howard got that right. He isnt. And it is. .Lisa Pease is a recognized expert on the assassinations of the '60s in general and the Robert Kennedy assassination in particular. She has appeared on numerous radio shows and on the Discovery channel to talk about various aspects of Cold War history. Several of her articles were published in "The Assassinations" (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003), a book she also co-edited. She is a regular constributor to ConsortiumNews.com, run by Robert Parry, the former AP and Newsweek journalist who, with a partner, broke the original Iran-Contra stories. Her work has also appeared in Common Dreams, Truthout and Michael Moores site. . --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 21, 2011 Testimony in British Hacking Inquiry Takes Debate Beyond Murdoch’s Empire The New York Times By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA LONDON — The actor Hugh Grant said Monday that British tabloid newspapers had broken into his home, accessed medical records and menaced his family as part of a “cowardly, bullying and shocking” press culture whose targets were not just celebrities, politicians and the police, but also people left vulnerable by misfortune. Through two hours of testimony before an official inquiry into press practices, Mr. Grant raised new accusations that broadened the debate to include all of the mass-circulation British tabloids, not just those owned by the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Mr. Grant displayed a barely contained animosity toward press intrusion that contrasted starkly with the boyish congeniality of his film roles. The inquiry was prompted by accusations that The News of the World, the weekly tabloid that the News Corporation shut down in July, had intercepted the voice mail messages of nearly 6,000 people, including Mr. Grant and some of his former girlfriends. But many of his accusations on Monday were aimed at The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, two papers belonging to Associated Newspapers that are among the best selling in Britain; they had previously been untainted by the phone-hacking scandal. Mr. Grant said he could not “for the life of me think of any conceivable source” for an article in The Mail on Sunday in 2007 that claimed that his relationship with the socialite Jemima Khan was imperiled by late-night conversations with a “plummy-voiced” British-born film executive, “other than the voice mails that were on my mobile telephone.” He sued and won damages, he said, because the claim of any intimate relationship was false. In a statement issued shortly after his testimony on Monday, The Mail on Sunday strongly denied hacking his phone and said its information had come instead from a freelance journalist who spoke to a source close to Ms. Khan. “Mr. Grant’s allegations are mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media,” the paper said. At the inquiry, Mr. Grant, 51, insisted that he was not pursuing a vendetta against the press over coverage of a 1995 scandal, when the police in Los Angeles caught Mr. Grant in a car with a prostitute he picked up on Sunset Boulevard and he was fined $1,180. “I totally expected there to be a press storm” after that, he said, and he saw the matter as fair game. “I’m the man who was arrested with a prostitute,” he said later, noting wryly that his career survived the humiliation. But he saw no fairness in what happened next: Mr. Grant said that in the aftermath of the prostitution scandal, the door to his London apartment was taken off its hinges and his apartment broken into. Nothing was taken, he said, but details of his interior furnishings were published a few days later, an episode he said was the work of a cynically intrusive tabloid press ready to break the law in pursuit of scoops and profits, not of truth. He described a more recent episode in which the grandmother of his infant daughter was “menaced” by a paparazzi photographer who was staking out her home: when she snapped a picture of the photographer, Mr. Grant said, the photographer drove his car straight at her in the street outside her home. Mr. Grant said he suspected that his medical records had been illegally obtained for at least two articles in different newspapers, and that the police were tipping off journalists about calls from celebrities. “A photographer or a journalist would show up on your doorstep before a policeman,” he said. The judge heading the inquiry, Sir Brian Leveson, has said that one of his main tasks will be to consider whether there should be tighter regulation and stronger penalties for newspapers that use abusive techniques. Mr. Grant said he is a strong supporter of a freewheeling press as fundamental to democracy, but is opposed to the “privacy-stealing industry” that the tabloids had become. “I’m the reverse of a muzzler,” he said, “but I personally feel that the license the British tabloid press has used to expropriate the right to privacy is a scandal that weak governments have allowed to continue for too long.” Britain, he said, has a long national history of standing up to bullies, and the phone-hacking scandal had given the country the chance to rein in a bullying tabloid culture that he and fellow celebrities saw as the worst in the world. “I just think a section of the press has been allowed to become toxic,” he said. Referring to the journalists and private investigators implicated in the scandal at The News of the World, he said, “It’s highly unlikely they were practicing dark arts for only one title.” The inquiry also heard from the parents of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old schoolgirl who was abducted and murdered in 2002. The News of the World has admitted hacking into her voice mail in the days before her body was discovered, and deleting messages when her in-box was full to make room for more. Her mother, Sally, told the inquiry on Monday that discovering the deletions had given her what proved to be painfully false hope that her daughter was still alive and checking her voice mail. She called on Mr. Murdoch to use the scandal “as an opportunity to put things right in future, and have some decent standards, and uphold them.” The inquiry has revealed startling statistics about the practice of voice mail interceptions, based on 11,000 pages of notes seized by the police from Glenn Mulcaire, an investigator employed by The News of the World. Mr. Mulcaire received 2,266 requests for interceptions from 28 journalists, his notes suggest. At least 16 former News of the World employees have been arrested in the matter so far. The Dowlers and Mr. Grant are among the movie stars, bereaved families, former intelligence officials and soccer players, among others, who are scheduled to testify in the coming days on the “culture, practice and ethics of the press,” the subject of the inquiry. The actors Steve Coogan and Sienna Miller, the author J. K. Rowling and the father of another missing child, Madeleine McCann, are among those expected to testify. At the outset of the hearing, the presiding judge denied a request from a lawyer for a British newspaper group to question the witnesses. He said he would afford the witnesses something they said the press had denied them: “a right of reply.”

Lies, Damn Lies, and National Geographic by Ralph Cinque Recently by Ralph Cinque: A Chiropractor Looks at the Zapruder Film www.lewrockwell.com November 22, 2011 I am shocked and staggered by this evening’s [November 20] presentation of The Lost Bullet on National Geographic television. Sure, I expected it to be one-sided and misleading in its defense of the Warren Report concerning the murder of President Kennedy. But no, I did not think they would resort to such outrageous tactics and woefully corrupt reasoning. First, the program, which was directed by journalist Max Holland, started with a lie. That lie was that researchers, of all stripes, including conspiracy theorists, agree that only 3 shots were fired that day: one that went through Kennedy and Connally; one that blew Kennedy’s head off; and one that missed completely and nicked a bystander, James Teague. No! Only Warren Report devotees claim that. Every single JFK researcher that I know of claims that more than 3 shots were fired. And, conspiracy researchers most certainly do not accept the single bullet theory, that one pristine "magic" bullet caused all 7 wounds in Kennedy and Connally and then emerged unscathed on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital after falling out of Connally’s thigh. The word they used on the program was "consensus." They said there was a "consensus" about those things, and therefore, they were able to assume them, which they did. Do you see how easy television journalism is? All you have to do is say that something is true, and act like it’s true, and as long as you control the camera and the microphone, you can get away with it. It was a bold-faced lie. I am calling you a xxxx, Holland! So, they started by laying that out and acting like it was all beyond reproach. And then they said that although controversies persist, the answer is to figure out what happened to the missing bullet. They maintained that two of the bullets (the magic bullet and the one that caused the fatal head shot) were accounted for, but the first bullet that missed completely was unaccounted for. Hence, the title of the program: The Lost Bullet. But, even though it was the last shot, they began by examining the fatal head shot. They acknowledged the controversy: that many people believe that the shot came from the direction of the Grassy Knoll, and they attributed that to two things: the fact that the area was closest to the limousine at the time, and the fact that Kennedy’s head went back and to the left. So, how did they deal with that? They brought on a ballistics expert, Larry Sturdivan, who explained that the shot could not have come from the Grassy Knoll because the bullet would have exited Kennedy’s head in the same direction, that is, to the left, and probably hit Jackie, and if not her, then someone else, and since that did not happen, the shot could not have come from the Grassy Knoll. What? Mr. Sturdivan, a ballistics expert, did not even raise the issue of a frangible bullet? A frangible bullet is a bullet that is designed to explode on contact. Here is the definition from Wikipedia: "A frangible bullet is one that is designed to disintegrate into tiny particles upon impact to minimize their penetration and to limit the danger behind the intended target." Mr. Sturdivan, a ballistics expert, actually sidestepped the whole issue of the frangible bullet. He just assumed that it was full metal jacketed bullet that would have traversed the cranium. But, this issue has not been overlooked by others in the JFK research community. I want to expound on this some because it is important. First, note that the title of the program was really a misnomer because there is really only one existing bullet, not two. Of course, many of us do not believe that the magic bullet, otherwise known as CE399, actually went through Kennedy and then entered Connally – twice – bursting two bones. But, we are just going to put that aside because they proffered it as foregone conclusion, ridiculous as it is, and for the sake of brevity, we’ll leave it alone. But, what happened to the bullet that struck Kennedy’s head and killed him? It did not do what Mr. Sturdivan, the expert, said. It did not pass through and out of Kennedy’s head – at least, not in the form of a bullet. Do you remember Kennedy’s threat that he was going to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces?" Well, that is pretty much what happened to that bullet. It pulverized. His head x-rays showed a virtual snowstorm of tiny particles throughout his brain from that bullet disintegrating. The bullet fragmented into numerous pieces. What have experts had to say about that? Forensic pathologist, Dr. Jimmy W. Green, said that "Full metal jacket bullets (like those Oswald allegedly used) fired from medium-to-high-velocity rifles do not fragment into numerous pieces." Dr. Eric Berg, another medical examiner, said: "In x-rays of gunshot wounds, the presence of small fragments of metal along the wound track (as seen in Kennedy) virtually rules out full metal-jacketed ammunition (such as what Oswald allegedly used). A lead snowstorm on x-ray (such as Kennedy had) rules out full metal jacketed ammunition." Forensic expert and detective Shaun Roach said: "Due to the inherent strength of the 6.5 mm Carcano jacket, I believe that it would not shear off and fragment upon entering the head. The head wound of President Kennedy has all the hallmarks of 5.56 mm bullet performance. I would expect that if JFK were struck in the head by a 6.5 Carcano bullet, the bullet would have crashed into the skull, out the other side, intact, and continued on till it hit something else." And finally, let’s listen to Dr. Cyril Wecht: "It is my experience with bullets, including bullets that are not as powerful and fully jacketed as this one [the 6.5 mm Carcano bullet], that they do not explode into dozens of pieces. They may break into two or three large fragments or pieces, but they don't just disintegrate like that [like the missile that left dozens of fragments in Kennedy's skull]. And so when you say it [the bullet or bullets that struck Kennedy in the head] behaved much more like a soft or hollow-point, I agree with you. I've been saying that for a long time." Do you see now how deceitful this program was? Forget about biased. It was way beyond biased. It was Machiavellian for them to glibly say that the shot could not have come from the Grassy Knoll because such a bullet would have traversed Kennedy’s head and struck Jackie. Hiding the existence of frangible bullets was most deceitful. Of course the killers were going to use a frangible bullet from the Grassy Knoll. Don’t you think they were under strict orders not to harm a hair on Jackie’s head? Besides, if the bullet disintegrated, it would hide, to some extent, its trajectory. They knew that all the shots had to look like they came from the Book Depository. The program offered two other reasons to reject the Grassy Knoll hypothesis: One was the fact that on the Zapruder film when Kennedy’s head explodes at frame 313, the mist of blood and fragments seems to be drifting forward. Therefore, the shot must have come from the rear. It’s funny: they take the movement of the mist, which was forward, as an indication of shot direction but not the movement of Kennedy’s whole head and body, which was back and to the left. But, at this point, I must refer you to Professor James Fetzer’s book, The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK. Dr. Fetzer is certain that the Zapruder film was altered in many ways, including the blob of red when the head explodes. And it really does look like somebody shot it with a paintgun. The other thing they did , which was really laughable, was simply show footage from other amateur movies of the Grassy Knoll taken that day showing that nobody was there. But wait! Nobody ever said that the gunman was standing on the grass in plain view. He was behind the picket fence! The term "picket fence" was never mentioned on the program, not even once. I kept waiting for it. It never came. And that brings us to the piece de resistance, the first bullet, the lost bullet. The Warren Report is rather wishy-washy about the missed shot. They know that it occurred because they found the evidence that it struck the curb, and Teague definitely got grazed by a fragment. But, they weren’t even sure if it was the first shot. If it was the first shot, how did Oswald miss by so much? He missed by the length of a football field! And yet, a few seconds later, at a greater distance, he hits Kennedy squarely in the head? They suggested that maybe the bullet deflected off the tree. And, in later years, attorney Gerald Posner, has elaborated on that theory. In his book, Case Closed, Posner proffered the idea that the bullet struck the tree and then the metal jacket popped off, and then inner core sailed on alone a great distance to strike the curb. Assassination researchers assailed Case Closed for its wild ideas and inaccuracies, but the mainstream media loved it, and Posner was almost awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History for writing it. But, now comes along Max Holland, and he says that the Warren Commission and Gerald Posner were both wrong. The first bullet didn’t hit the tree; it hit the traffic light. Of course, the existing traffic light isn’t there any more, but they found a photo or an amateur movie which included the traffic light on Elm Street, and sure enough, it looks like there is a defect (a gouge? a mark?) on the bottom of it that Holland says could have been made by a bullet deflecting off of it. Before going any further, let me sum up Orlando Martin’s take on the first bullet. Orlando is the author of JFK: Analysis of a Shooting. Note that Orlando is a retired military sharpshooter and ballistics expert. Orlando explains that the first bullet missed completely and hit the curb on the southeast end of Main Street near the underpass, which was 400 feet away from the limousine, which is common knowledge. How could Oswald have taken a down-angled shot and missed by 134 yards? And there was another problem: lead and antimony components were found but no copper, and it was supposed to be a copper jacketed bullet. (Thank God for Gerald Posner’s fertile mind) Some have tried, through the Freedom of Information Act, to get to see the spectrograph analysis plate from that shot. But alas, the FBI said that the plate had been destroyed to save space in their building. This is a building that is a city-block long, and the plate is 1/32 of an inch thick. What does the lack of copper tell us about the missed bullet? It tells us that it could not possibly have been a 6.5 mm Carcano bullet, alleged to be used by Oswald. Plus, the small amount of damage it did to the curbstone proves that it had to be a smaller bullet, hence, a very different caliber. But, there is no basis for assuming the bullet deflected before it hit the curb. What happened is that it was shot from a low elevation; it sailed over Kennedy’s head, perhaps not by much, and then it kept going until it ran out of gas, and gravity took it down. Like many other assassination researchers, Orlando believes that the most likely place where the first gunman was perched was a low elevation in the Dal-Tex building, which was the next building down from the Book Depository on the same side of the street. But, Max Holland, whose vivid imagination surely has to rival Mr. Posner’s, has his reasons for saying no, it was Oswald shooting very early on, practically at the intersection. It hit the metal frame of the traffic light and then bounced off of it, which meant that it deflected an even greater distance. Wow! And you wouldn’t believe the things he offered as proof. One was the position of the three spent cartridges on the floor at the Book Depository. Holland claimed that one of them was in a position, a spot on the floor, that required, demanded that Oswald must have been aiming at the traffic pole at the time. Wow again! The things that Physics can prove! Of course, it’s a big advantage to Warren devotees to claim that the first (missed) shot came that early on because it means that instead of having 6.2 seconds to get off all 3 shots, Oswald had over 11 seconds. So now all that dazzling and impossible marksmanship goes away. But, not quite. It is widely accepted that the longest interval was between the first two shots. It’s the second two shots that were close together, and getting off those two shots in 4-some seconds and hitting the target both times would still have been a phenomenal shooting performance on the part of Oswald. Holland didn’t mention that. He just made it sound like the (assumed) 11 second timespan for the whole shooting spree made it a cakewalk. I don’t remember his exact words, but my impression was that he felt it would have been easy. But, one thing he did not address at all was that old lack-of-copper-on-the-curb problem. Was he alleging, like Posner, that the copper jacket came off and that the core sailed on by itself? Is that a reasonable thing to expect from a full metal jacketed bullet bouncing off of a metal object? But wait! There is an easy way he could have tested his theory! He could have simply shot at the traffic light and seen if the bullet shed its jacket and bounced all the way to curb at the southeast end of Main by the underpass – the entire length of Dealey Plaza. Come on, Max! You’re a physicist! And you know the laws of physics haven’t changed. If it happened that way in November 1963, it should happen again that way in November 2011. Surely, the Dallas police can clear the area for a day so that you can accomplish this test. And if they can’t, then you can duplicate it somewhere else. It wouldn’t be that hard. I’m just saying that before you pat yourself on the back for being so smart, why don’t you actually test it? See if the bullet actually does do what you claim it did? There was also a lot of incriminating of Oswald. Holland made a big deal about the testimony of Amos Euins, the 15-year-old boy who claimed to see a man at the window of the Book Depository. But, Euins never identified the man he saw as Oswald. In fact, his description of the man at the time differed from Oswald. For instance, he kept emphasizing a bald spot on the man’s head which didn’t match Oswald. For the record, Orlando does not think that any of the shots came from the 6th floor of the Book Depository – certainly not the confirmed missed shot, nor any of the shots that hit targets. Like all other sensible researchers, he thinks that the head shot came from behind the picket fence at the Grassy Knoll, and he thinks the other shots that hit Kennedy and Connally came from the Dallas Criminal Court building across the street. And that’s because those shots had a left-to-right trajectory, not a right-to-left trajectory. The entrance wound in Kennedy’s throat had to come from the front, obviously. But, it stands to reason that if the conspirators were planning to frame Oswald that they’d stick somebody up there in the Depository and hope that somebody saw him. In conclusion, I don’t have to ask how convincing the program was because it was not at all convincing. It was a rude insult to one’s intelligence. It was a crime against humanity in its own right. But alas, I do have to ask how persuasive it was to American viewers. I am sure that many American viewers were appalled by it, as I was. But the idea that any viewers of any nationality were impressed with it, is disturbing. You might think from that that I have a low opinion of humanity. But, I say no! It’s Max Holland who thinks that people are stupid because he’s the one who made the thing, and he’s the one who’s trying to sell it. It was the lowest and most abhorrent and demeaning attempt at mass manipulation and indoctrination that I have ever witnessed. Curse you, Max Holland.

Elle Macpherson's aide fired over leaks, inquiry hears A former adviser to supermodel Elle Macpherson today told the phone hacking inquiry that she was fired after being suspected of leaking stories. Daily Telegraph 22 Nov 2011 Mary-Ellen Field said she was accused of speaking to the media because she was an "alcoholic" and was persuaded to spend time in a clinic. Lord Justice Leveson was told that Ms Field had made allegations of phone hacking, spoken to police and was seeking damages in the High Court. Ms Field told the inquiry that she was a specialist in "intellectual property rights" and was working for an international tax and accountancy firm when she met Macpherson in 2003. She said she got on well with Macpherson - who, like her, came from Sydney, Australia - and the model became her client. Ms Field said the relationship was "very successful" from both a "financial" and "developmental" point of view and the pair did "very exciting things". She said she and Macpherson became friends and the model confided in her. Ms Field said Macpherson was given an office at her firm. "She said 'Why don't I move into your office?"' said Ms Field. "I asked my CEO (Chief Executive Officer), who was a man, and it took probably three nano-seconds to decide it would be a good idea to have a supermodel in the office." Ms Field said in 2005 Macpherson separated from her boyfriend and "tittle-tattle" appeared in the press. She said the model became concerned about "listening devices" and security checks were carried out but nothing was found. Ms Field said she was contacted by a lawyer representing Macpherson and told that the model was "not prepared to have me speaking in the press any more". "I was amazed. So I called Elle," said Ms Field. "It was the first time she was really grouchy with me. She said 'I can't have you speaking to the media. You have been speaking to the press'." Ms Field told the inquiry that she had "absolutely not" been speaking to the media about Macpherson. She added: "Until last year I had probably only met about four journalists in my life." Ms Field said it was suggested to her that she had been speaking to journalists because she was "alcoholic". She told the judge: "I said, 'excuse me?"' and added: "I thought they had all gone mad." Ms Field said Macpherson had proposed rehabilitation. "Elle had proposed I go to rehab to recover from this 'alcoholism' - the same place she goes to," said Ms Field. "She said she knows I would never go to the press unless I was alcoholic." Ms Field said the model had told her that if she did not go to the clinic she would be fired. She said Macpherson wore her down and she "gave in" and went to a clinic called The Meadows - which the inquiry has been told was in the United States. "I have never even had a cigarette in my life. I didn't even know what they were talking about," said Ms Field. "They wanted me to take anti-depressants. I wouldn't. I'm a runner and I wanted to use the gym and they wouldn't let me because they said it was 'obsessive behaviour'... "They said I was getting intervention - like in those CIA renditions." Ms Field added: "Elle told me it was like a spa or something. It was a grade-one psychiatric facility with men going around with guns." She went on: "One woman had injected drugs between her toes ... It was horrible." Ms Field said after she left the clinic Macpherson had told her that she was "fired". She had lost her job and her firm after being told that she was "indiscreet" and that "Elle didn't trust me". She said the loss of her job had a "very serious effect" on her which was made worse by her becoming "ill". Ms Field said police investigating phone hacking had made arrests in 2006 and following those developments she had contacted police and begun litigation. A lawyer representing Ms Field had earlier told the inquiry how it emerged that stories had been obtained by the unlawful interception of Ms Field's and Macpherson's voicemails.

Leveson Inquiry: 'bizarre' story raised Hugh Grant's phone hacking suspicions Actor Hugh Grant today suggested to the Leveson Inquiry that his phone may have been hacked by the Mail on Sunday. Daily Telegraph 3:40PM GMT 21 Nov 2011 Mr Grant told Lord Justice Leveson about a "bizarre, left field" story about him, which featured in the newspaper in February 2007. He added: "I would love to hear what the (Mail on Sunday's) explanation of that is, if it wasn't phone hacking." Mr Grant said he had not made the allegation in public before. He said he had been preparing documents and going through his "trials and tribulations" when the "penny dropped". Mr Grant said the story claimed that his relationship with then girlfriend Jemima Khan was on the rocks because of his "late night phone calls with a plummy-voiced studio executive". He said the story was untrue and he had not been able to think "for the life of me" what the source of the story could be. The only explanation he could think of was that messages had been left on his phone by an executive's assistant, who had a voice which could be described as "plummy". "I was preparing these statements, going through these trials and tribulations," he said. "Then the penny dropped." He added: "I would love to hear what the (Mail on Sunday's) explanation of that is, if it wasn't phone hacking." Mr Grant gave details of the story after being asked how many times he had brought libel actions. He said in the past 17 years he had brought libel actions on between six and 10 occasions. Grant referred to an article published earlier this year about him attending the Accident and Emergency department at Chelsea and Westminster hospital in London. The article, which appeared in the Sun and the Daily Express, showed him as a celebrity who waited patiently with everyone else in the A and E ward. However, Grant said that by publishing him in a good light the tabloid was trying to "cover a breach of privacy". He said: "This is an article that says that I went to hospital – it is my medical record saying I was dizzy with shortness of breath – which was a gross intrusion of my privacy. "I think no one would expect their medical records to be made public or to be appropriated by newspapers for commercial profit. "That is fundamental to our British sense of decency." Grant told the newspapers that he would not file a lawsuit if each of the papers would donate £5,000 to Healthtalkonline. "The Express flatly refused to pay a penny ... the Sun gave £1,500," he said. He said he believed that someone at the hospital may be "on retainer" for a newspaper or an agency – when the worker would tip off the press if someone famous was to attend. In April 2007, Mr Grant accepted undisclosed libel damages over claims that his relationship with Ms Khan was destroyed by a flirtation with a film executive – and his conduct over Liz Hurley's wedding. The settlement of Mr Grant's legal actions over articles in the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail in February 2007 was announced at the High Court in London. Mr Grant's solicitor, Simon Smith, told Mr Justice Gray that the damages would be donated to the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity. He said the first article – Hugh, Drew and the Jealousy of Jemima – alleged that Grant, while in a relationship with Ms Khan, was conducting a flirtation with a female senior Warner Bros executive. It also claimed that he pretended to Ms Khan that his regular late-night calls with this woman were simply to discuss a movie, that Ms Khan's suspicion was the cause of such acute distress on her part that she barely ate for weeks, and that it was this that had finally destroyed their relationship. A second article – Guess Hugh's free to join Liz at her wedding after all – asserted that he would be attending Ms Hurley's wedding, would be making a speech and acting as an usher. It added that as a wedding gift, he had sponsored a chimpanzee at a British zoo and had separately bought an extraordinarily expensive necklace and arranged for it to be inscribed with a personal message from him for Ms Hurley. The article then alleged that Grant's actions amounted, as far as Ms Khan was concerned, to "a nail in the coffin" and "the last straw", thus causing the end of their relationship. In addition, it alleged that Grant's gift came despite Ms Hurley's wish to wedding guests that instead of gifts, donations be made to Sir Elton John's Aids Foundation. A third article – Hugh aren't good enough – alleged that Grant resented having to promote his films. Mr Smith said that at no stage was any of this put to Grant prior to publication. He said Mr Grant did not know of a woman from Warner Bros matching this description, let alone that he was conducting a flirtation with her. As far as he was aware, she simply did not exist. Mr Smith said that the publication of these numerous false allegations in quick succession caused hurt, embarrassment and distress to Grant and damage to both his personal and professional reputations. Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, offered its apologies and agreed not to repeat the false allegations. As well as the damages, which Grant made clear from the outset would be donated to charity, it also agreed to reimburse his legal costs in full. Afterwards, Grant said in a statement: "I took this action because I was tired of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday papers publishing almost entirely fictional articles about my private life for their own financial gain. "I'm also hoping that this statement in court might remind people that the so-called 'close friends' or 'close sources' on which these stories claim to be based almost never exist."

Leveson inquiry: phone hacking 'made Dowlers think Milly was alive' Parents of murdered schoolgirl say deletion of voicemails gave false hope, and they believe their own phones were hacked By James Robinson guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 November 2011 07.25 EST The mother of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler has told the Leveson inquiry of the moment she believed her daughter was picking up her voicemail messages, giving false hope that she was still alive. It emerged in July this year that voicemails had been deleted from Milly Dowler's phone after she went missing in 2002, creating space for new messages to be left, giving her parents hope that she might still be alive. Bob and Sally Dowler were the first victims of alleged press intrusion to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry. Sally Dowler, speaking at Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into phone hacking and media standards at the high court in London on Monday, said: "It clicked through on to her voicemail so I heard her voice and [said] 'she's picked up her voicemail Bob, she's alive'." She added: "I told my friends: 'She's picked up her voicemail, she's picked up her voicemail.'" The couple also told the court that a private walk they took seven weeks after their daughter's disappearance was pictured prominently in the News of the World. They claimed photographers were tipped off about the walk after their own mobile phones were hacked. Bob Dowler said: "The thing to remember is the walk was nothing to do with Milly's phone." His wife added: "That was our own home phone or own mobile phones." Sally Dowler also described a July meeting with Rupert Murdoch, during which the News Corporation chairman and chief executive apologised for the hacking of their daughter's phone, as "very tense". She added: "He was very sincere." Murdoch met with the Dowlers after News Corp subsidiary News International had closed the News of the World in the wake of the Milly Dowler phone-hacking revelations. Last month News International agreed to pay the Dowlers £2m in compensation, with Murdoch personally donating another £1m in total to charities of their choice. Gemma Dowler, Milly's sister, told Murdoch in that meeting to use the hacking of Milly's phone as a opportunity to change newspaper practices in the future, the inquiry heard. Bob Dowler said: "Given the gravity of what became public … one would sincerely hope that News International and other media organisations would look very carefully at how they procure … information about stories, because obviously the ramifications are very much greater than just an obvious story in the press." The Dowlers learnt from the Metropolitan police that their daughter's phone had been hacked shortly before the trial of their daughter's killer, Levi Bellfield, earlier this year, the inquiry was told. When this was revealed by the Guardian in July it led to a wave of public revulsion, which prompted the New of the World closure. Earlier today Jonathan Caplan QC for the Daily Mail owner Associated Newspapers told Leveson the newspaper group wanted the right to cross-examine some witnesses. Leveson said it would be "unusual to permit cross-examination outside the inquiry team", but added that he wanted to be "balanced and fair" and ensure that what is scrutinised is the "conduct and practice of the press, not the conduct and practice of any of the witnesses who are giving evidence". The other witnesses today are journalist Joan Smith, actor Hugh Grant and footballer Ashley Cole's solicitor Graham Shear

Phone-hacking victims must not launch 'witch-hunt', says News International Former News of the World publisher agrees to disclose information to claimants including Jude Law and Paul Gascoigne By James Robinson guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 November 2011 12.03 EST News International has told the high court the celebrities, politicians and victims of crime suing the company over phone hacking must not be allowed to conduct a "witch-hunt" against the newspaper group. A number of well-known figures, including Jude Law, Labour MP Chris Bryant and members of the public including Sheila Henry, whose son was killed in the 7/7 bombings, are suing the former News of the World owner for breach of privacy. In total News International is facing more than 60 civil actions for breach of privacy relating to phone hacking by the now-closed Sunday tabloid. Michael Silverleaf QC, for News International, said: "it is not appropriate … for claimants to conduct a crusade. The proceedings must not be conducted as a witch-hunt against my client." A trial of six "test cases" is scheduled for January so that a benchmark can be set for damages in those and other claims. News International agreed to disclose information sought by the claimants on Friday after the company dropped an attempt to have a claim for exemplary damages struck out. Exemplary damages are designed to act as a warning against repeating an offence and are set higher than conventional compensation payments for that reason. Silverleaf argued that the Leveson inquiry into press standards was already conducting "a detailed examination of what went on at News International". He said the court should not "cover the same ground" and become an "entirely parallel investigation". But the high court judge, Mr Justice Vos, said: "It is not a witch-hunt. It is not a crusade. It's to determine the damages that you must fairly pay … I'm not going to allow a 'mini Leveson inquiry' to take place here." News International subsequently agreed to search a copy made by the police of the hard drive of a computer belonging to Dan Evans, a former News of the World journalist. Jeremy Reed QC, for the claimants, said the computer contained 76 digital recordings, although he conceded it was not clear whether they might include hacked voicemail messages. Reed said Evans's computer was "the only computer that hasn't been put through the grinder by News Group Newspapers". News Group is the News International subsidiary that published the News of the World until it was closed in July at the height of the furore over phone hacking. Reed added that the others had been "smashed up" when the company moved to new premises earlier this year. Silverleaf, for NI, said: "The voicemails on Mr Evans's computer have already been reviewed … and they didn't appear to be relevant. We will check them again." The claimants, who also include Paul Gascoigne and football agent Sky Andrew, will also be handed copies of any documents that show whether a private detective, Derek Webb, placed them under surveillance. They also won an order forcing Clive Goodman, the News of the World's former royal editor, to hand over documents relating to an unfair dismissal complaint he made to the company in 2007 after he was sacked in the wake of being sentenced for hacking into phones belonging to members of the royal household. News International has already searched for those documents but said they could not be found. Silverleaf also repeated News International's apology over phone hacking. "These events should not have occurred," he said. But he drew attention to what he said was the Leveson inquiry's inaccurate claim earlier this week that at least 28 News of the World journalists were implicated in phone hacking because they were named in notebooks recovered form private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. The barrister acting for the Metropolitan police told the Leveson inquiry on Wednesday that it was wrong to assume that the 28 names found in Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks were News of the World employees. Neil Garnham QC told Lord Justice Leveson towards the end of the third day of the inquiry at the high court on Wednesday that Scotland Yard had not yet established whether each of the 28 names were NoW employees. "While some of them probably are News of the World journalists many of them could easily not be," he said. "Relatively few of the names are demonstrably News of the World journalists." NI also agreed to hand over any instructions it issued to HCL Technologies, a company based in India which managed the company's email archive, to delete data, which it did on nine separate occasions.

I was shocked to discover that Daniel Sheehan was working on a project with Dick Billings. Do you know if it relates to this subject matter? http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsheehan.htm I have no knowledge of this aspect. Hopefully another member of the forum does.

Leveson inquiry: Hugh Grant and Dowlers to give evidence on Monday Actor and parents of murdered schoolgirl likely to be first of phone-hacking victims to give evidence By Lisa O'Carroll guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 November 2011 09.43 EST Actor Hugh Grant is due to join the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler at the high court on Monday to tell Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into media standards about how their lives have been affected by press intrusion. Bob and Sally Dowler are the first of five core participant victims of press intrusion provisionally scheduled to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry on Monday, followed by Grant. The Dowlers, who received a £2m settlement for phone hacking from News International, plus a £1m personal donation from Rupert Murdoch to charities of their choice, are likely to give powerful testimony about their treatment by the defunct Sunday tabloid, which they claim wrote front-page stories based on information gained by accessing Milly's mobile as well as their own phones. Messages left on Milly's phone were deleted by the paper to make way for new ones while she was missing in 2002. Grant, who has become a fierce critic of the tabloid press over phone hacking, is expected to launch a full scale assault on the Daily Mail and News of the World. Earlier on Friday the high court judge, Mr Justice Tugendhat, explained why he had granted an injunction against "unbearable" paparazzi from stalking the mother of Grant's baby. Actor Tinglan Hong disclosed the full details of the menacing calls she had received telling her to "tell Hugh Grant to shut the xxxx up" when he was on Question Time talking about phone hacking. The Dowlers and Grant will be joined on Monday by Jude Law's lawyer, Graham Shear, and Joan Smith, the writer and former partner of Labour MP Dennis MacShane. Monday will be the start of five days of sustained and uncomfortable criticism of the press by 21 celebrities and public figures who are alleged victims of intrusion and have been chosen to give evidence to the inquiry into media standards. On Tuesday the actor Steve Coogan, who has also railed against the press, will be among the witnesses, followed by Elle Macpherson's former adviser Mary Ellen Field, the ex Premier League footballer Garry Flitcroft and Margaret Watson, the mother of a 16-year-old schoolgirl who was murdered in 1991. Watson is not a name that will stand out in the cast of core participants, but her story could be among the most pertinent. Watson and her husband have fought a 20-year campaign to reform defamation laws in Scotland in a challenge to the convention that the dead cannot be libelled. On Wednesday Paul Gascoigne's former wife Sheryl will give evidence as will Mark Lewis, the solicitor who has helped expose the extent of phone hacking at the News of the World. He will tell how he was the focus of a covert surveillance operation by the paper while the investigation into phone hacking was going on as part of an alleged plot to smear him. Also scheduled for Wednesday is Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine went missing from their holiday apartment in Portugal in May 2007. McCann is expected to tell how his wife Kate felt "mentally raped" when her private diaries appeared in the News of the World and how they battled against a hostile press who wrongly believed they had been involved in the disappearance of their child. Thursday will be another busy day at London's high court with evidence due to be given by actor Sienna Miller, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, former formula one boss Max Mosley and solicitor Mark Thomson, who has been acting for Hugh Grant in the phone-hacking investigation. The Leveson inquiry will not sit on Friday and will resume on Monday 28 November when Charlotte Church and Anne Diamond will appear alongside former army intelligence officer Ian Hurst, the Bristol landlord Christopher Jefferies who was arrested over the murder of Joanne Yates but released without charge, and Jane Winter, a peace

St. John Hunt, Howard Hunt's son with whom Howard left his taped deathbed confession, is a speaker at COPA this weekend. His biography in the conference agenda states that he has a new book coming out on his father/CIA and that a movie is in the works. http://politicalassassinations.com/2010/10/dallas-2010-full-details-announced/

St. John Hunt, Howard Hunt's son with whom Howard left his taped deathbed confession, is a speaker at COPA this weekend. His biography in the conference agenda states that he has a new book coming out on his father/CIA and that a movie is in the works. http://politicalassassinations.com/2010/10/dallas-2010-full-details-announced/

Phone hacking: Steve Coogan compares NI to a 'protection racket' Actor, who will give evidence to the Leveson inquiry next week, says News International uses negative coverage as a weapon By James Robinson guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 November 2011 12.53 EST Steve Coogan has compared News International to a "protection racket" that uses the threat of press intrusion to ensure it is allowed to "conduct business unencumbered by scrutiny or regulation". The actor, who will give evidence to the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking on Tuesday, is one of dozens of people suing the former owner of the News of the World in the high court for allegedly hacking into his mobile phone messages. In an article for the Guardian, Coogan writes that Britain's most powerful newspaper group, whose titles include the Sun and the Times, employs the prospect of negative coverage "as a weapon against those who get in the way of News International". "Its behaviour is not unlike a protection racket: be nice to us – that is, let us conduct our business unencumbered by scrutiny or indeed regulation – and we will return the favour. Be nasty to us – ie subject us to too many checks and balances, or curtail our plans to expand our empire – and you will feel our wrath," he said. Coogan added that the reputations of those who fail to do News International's bidding are damaged if they do not cooperate with the company. "It's a word in the ear and a life is ruined," he said. "This intrusion into people's lives has been the way of things for the past 40 years. History teaches us that it doesn't matter how plainly wrong something is; if you do it systematically, unblinkingly and for long enough then it becomes accepted, part of the zeitgeist. That is Rupert Murdoch's toxic legacy." Coogan attacks James Murdoch, who is the third most senior executive at News International owner News Corporation, for declaring war on the publicly funded BBC. "At the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival in 2009, he said the only way to guarantee independence is the market. No, Mr Murdoch, the unchecked market leads to the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone," he wrote. The revelation that the murdered schoolgirl's voicemail messages were intercepted and deleted by the News of the World prompted a wave of public revulsion and lead directly to the closure of the paper. "No amount of respectable, well-modulated management-speak from James Murdoch can disguise the direct link between increased circulation and, literally, going through people's rubbish bins", Coogan said. "At the heart of this scandal is the wholly undemocratic alliance between newspaper proprietors and government. In a hundred years, the relationship will be seen as corrupt as the Corn Laws and rotten boroughs of the 19th century." Coogan has spent tens of thousands of pounds on his legal battle with News International. "I became involved in this saga because, apart from a few notable exceptions including [the Guardian], no one was giving NI as hard a time as they give everyone else", he wrote. He calls for a "fundamental cultural change" at newspapers similar to that which took place following the MPs expenses affair. "How we achieve this is yet to be determined, but it is about ethics, common decency and treating people with respect."

Phone hacking: Alan McGee says detail in NoW PI's notes is 'frightening' Creation Records founder says police told him that he may have been targeted in 2005 – but believes he was hacked earlier By Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 November 2011 08.37 EST Creation Records founder Alan McGee has been told by police what personal details appear on notes seized from the former News of the World private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. "The information that they have on me is ridiculous," he told the Guardian. "The News of the World had my answer machine number, the code to break into it, they had my postcode, my landline, Poptones number, they even had the old account number on my bill. They had too much information. How the xxxx did they get that? It's frightening." The former Oasis and Primal Scream label boss is poised to sue News International, after the Metropolitan police uncovered evidence a fortnight ago that he may have been targeted in 2005. Sitting in the foyer of a central London hotel, wearing tinted glasses and a gingham bowler hat, McGee said: "Do I want to take it to a civil case? I probably do. I'm outraged more by the whole ethos of it." However, McGee suspects that his voicemail messages were being intercepted long before 2005. He says he was "obviously hackable" in the late 1990s, when the Gallagher brothers or other Creation Records artists were rarely out of the papers. Police are unable to confirm whether McGee was targeted in the 1990s, as Mulcaire's records only go back to 2000. "I can remember stories breaking at the end of Creation in 1998, 1999. I'd speak to Noel and then the next day, 9am, someone would say it's in the Currant Bun. I think if I was getting turned over properly it was in the latter part of the 1990s. That's when I was obviously hackable," he said. "The weirdest one for me – now it seems to make sense – was me saying to Noel at 11pm 'I'm going to chuck Creation in' and it arriving in the paper at 9am the next morning. I always thought somehow he'd told the wrong person, and he probably thought I had dropped it [to the paper]. I didn't tell the Sun. I don't think he did. I think either of us were hacked. But the police don't have records going back to 1999." McGee said his voicemail in 2005 would have been full of troubled messages from Courtney Love, who was signed to his Poptones label at the time. In August 2005, there were false reports that Love was pregnant with Steve Coogan's child. Coogan is one of a number of celebrities suing the News of the World for breach of privacy. Despite being distressed at the thought of his private messages being intercepted, McGee is keen to downplay his own role in the hacking saga. "Compared to Milly Dowler and the McCanns I'm not even on the map," he said. "In comparison to the xxxx these people have had to deal with … to me it's just morally utterly wrong and bankrupt and I'm outraged by what they've done to other people."

Phone hacking: NI asks judge to strike out exemplary damages claims Publisher's lawyer seeks to avoid punitive fines in civil actions brought by Steve Coogan, Sky Andrew and other victims By Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 November 2011 12.54 EST News International wants a high court judge to strike out demands from phone-hacking victims for high-value exemplary damages in a case conference due to be heard in London on Friday. Olswang, the Murdoch-owned publisher's new lawyers, wants Mr Justice Vos to rule that the company should not be liable for punitive fines in any of the cluster of civil actions ranged against it. News International is the defendant in more than 60 phone-hacking-related civil actions, including cases brought by Sheila Henry, the mother of 7/7 victim Christian Small, actor Steve Coogan and football agent Sky Andrew. Trials in a handful of "lead actions" are expected to be conducted next year, with the intention of setting a benchmark for compensation cases in the future. Exemplary damages are payments so large that they are intended not as compensation to the victim but to deter the publisher from doing something similar again. News International is not disputing that it could be liable to pay a lower level of compensatory damages, in cases where it has admitted liability or a judge had ruled against it. In October, News International reached a £2m settlement with the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose phone had been targeted by the News of the World. Rupert Murdoch also made a personal donation of £1m to charities nominated by the family. Earlier this year, Sienna Miller agreed to £100,000 in compensation after the News of the World accepted unconditional liability for her phone hacking claims, which had been considered a high level of payout before the Dowler settlement was announced.

Rebekah Brooks 'overjoyed' she is to have baby girl through surrogate Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, is expecting a baby girl through a surrogate mother. Daily Telegraph 5:21PM GMT 17 Nov 2011 The 43-year-old, who was arrested over the phone hacking scandal, said she and her husband, the racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, expect to become parents in February and are “overjoyed”. However, Mrs Brooks also disclosed that the child had had a twin who died at an early stage of the pregnancy. The couple, who married in June 2009, have been trying for a child for five years. After having no success, they elected to investigate other options and found the surrogate mother in early summer. She has not been named and wishes to remain anonymous. Mrs Brooks edited the News of the World and the Sun before becoming chief executive of News International, the newspapers’ parent company, in 2009. In July, it emerged that a private detective working for the News of the World had hacked the mobile phone of Milly Dowler, the murdered schoolgirl. Mrs Brooks resigned her post on July 15 and, two days later, Scotland Yard detectives arrested her on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption. She is currently on police bail. Her lawyer has said she denies committing any criminal offence. A spokesman for Mrs Brooks said yesterday: “Charlie and Rebekah are overjoyed. While the pregnancy has not been without its difficulties and sadness, Charlie and Rebekah are obviously hoping for a very happy ending to almost five years of trying to conceive themselves. “Both parents are acutely aware of the infertility problems encountered by many other couples, and in the longer term hope to recognise their own good fortune by working in some way to help others facing similar

Poster's note: This is an important article in that it reveals the evil perpetrated by Murdoch's criminal enterprise that caused a number of suicides. The Murdoch family's fiancial fortune and media empire grew as innocent people were destroyed. ------------------------ Lawyer Outlines Methods Used by British Paper in Hacking Case The New York Times By SARAH LYALL November 16, 2011 LONDON — A lawyer representing 51 people who say they were victims of phone hacking and press intrusion told a hearing on Wednesday that his clients and their families had been followed, spied on, threatened, harassed, vilified, blackmailed and driven to suicide attempts by a British tabloid run amok. Testifying before the Leveson Inquiry, called to examine press ethics in the wake of the phone hacking scandal that shook the British news media and political establishment last summer, the lawyer, David Sherborne, described some of the particulars. He told of the actor Hugh Grant’s former girlfriend, while pregnant with the couple’s child, receiving “a barrage of telephone calls” from a blocked number one evening just as Mr. Grant was speaking out against the tabloid press on a BBC program. “When she finally answered,” he said, “she was threatened in the most menacing terms” and ordered to tell Mr. Grant to “shut up.” He also described how the parents of Milly Dowler, a teenager who was murdered in 2002, felt “euphoria” when they discovered that voice mail messages had been deleted from her cellphone after she went missing, leading them to think it meant that she was still alive. The parents later learned that The News of the World had hacked into her phone and deleted the messages to make room for more messages from her distraught friends and family, so they could then listen to those, too. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which owned The News of the World and shut it down in July, recently paid the Dowler family $3.2 million in compensation. The disclosure that Milly’s phone had been hacked, first made by The Guardian in July, caused widespread revulsion in Britain. The matter escalated into a full-blown scandal, and more than a dozen former News of the World employees have been arrested so far on suspicion of phone hacking and paying police officers for information. Many of Mr. Sherborne’s clients, including several members of Parliament and the writer J. K. Rowling, are due to testify before the panel next week, and Mr. Sherborne laid out some of their grievances in advance. He mentioned Max Mosley, a former motor racing executive who was the subject of a News of the World article that accused him of having taken part in a Nazi-themed sex session with several prostitutes (he admitted to the sex session, but not to the Nazi theme; he won a court case proving the paper wrong). The story — which had been sold to the newspaper by one of the prostitutes, who was instructed (unsuccessfully) by an editor to lure Mr. Mosley into giving a “Sieg Heil” salute that could then be photographed — so distressed his family that it was a factor in his son’s subsequent suicide, Mr. Sherborne said. A journalist posing as a passer-by then tried to crash Mr. Mosley’s son’s funeral and photograph the guests. The lawyer also cited a celebrity singer, Charlotte Church, saying that The News of the World had reported that she was pregnant, before she told her parents. The paper also published an article exposing Ms. Church’s father’s extramarital affair, Mr. Sherborne said — whereupon Ms. Church’s mother tried to kill herself. “In an act of ‘sensitivity,’ ” he added, the newspaper then told the mother, who had been hospitalized, that if she gave them an exclusive interview, “they would not run another lurid story about her husband’s affair.” Another of Mr. Sherborne’s clients, the soccer player Garry Flitcroft, was exposed for having cheated on his wife. The subsequent treatment of Mr. Flitcroft’s parents and children — followed by reporters and photographers on foot, in cars and in helicopters — proved so upsetting that it contributed to Mr. Flitcroft’s father’s suicide, Mr. Sherborne said.

Leveson inquiry: tabloids accused of blackmail and bullying Popular press hound victims to satisfy an insatiable public appetite for salacious gossip in the pursuit of profit, hearing told By James Robinson and Lisa O'Carroll The Guardian, Wednesday 16 November 2011 The British tabloids were accused of misdemeanours including "blackmail, intrusion, harassment, hounding … and bullying" by a barrister representing victims of their behaviour at the Leveson inquiry into press standards . In a detailed and, at times, devastating attack on the popular press which lasted over three hours, David Sherborne told the inquiry those practices were "systemic, flagrant and deeply entrenched". They were employed in order to "satisfy an insatiable public appetite for salacious gossip" in the pursuit of profit, he said, and could rarely, if ever, be justified on public interest grounds. Phone hacking at the News of the World was widespread, he added, and the information intercepted was used as "quotes from pals" or "just to stand up stories". Sherborne offered a flavour of the evidence the inquiry will hear next week, when witnesses including Sheryl Gascoigne, Charlotte Church, JK Rowling and Chris Jefferies, who was wrongly suspected of murdering Joanne Yeates, will appear in person. Jefferies, said Sherborne, had been the subject of "a media feeding frenzy of almost unprecedented proportions" after his arrest. Other witnesses will include Steve Coogan and Ian Hurst, an ex-army intelligence officer who alleges the NoW hacked into his emails. Some victims had their home addresses made public, Sherborne said, and most had seen their friends, families and employees targeted by the tabloids. Max Mosley, who won a privacy case against the NoW, believed his son's death from a drug overdose was linked to Mosley's treatment at the hand of the press, Sherborne said. "He was mobbed by journalists at the house even though he had written to newspaper editors asking to be left alone." A reporter wore a disguise in an attempt to gain entry to his son's funeral, it was alleged. Mosley will appear before the inquiry on Thursday. Sherborne said another witness, former Premier League footballer Garry Flitcroft, whose affair was revealed by the Sunday People, believed its coverage contributed to the suicide of his father, who was suffering from Parkinson's disease. The children of Rowling, who has fought a long battle with Fleet Street to try to avoid press intrusion, had notes placed in their school bags, Sherborne said. Gerry and Kate McCann, whose daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal in 2007, will also give evidence to the inquiry – was set up in the summer by David Cameron in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal – Sherborne revealed, describing their treatment by the press as a "national scandal". He said Gerry had described Kate as feeling "mentally raped" when the NoW ran the contents of a private diary she had written to her daughter following her disappearance. The lawyer said it had been presented in such a way that it created the impression it had been published with her permission: "On what grounds did they think they could justify such a staggering intrusion into the McCanns' privacy?" He added: "There are the stories behind the headlines. This is the real, brutally real, impact this kind of journalism has." Lawyers representing Britain's biggest newspaper groups, including the Daily Mail's owner, Associated Newspapers, and News International, which publishes the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times, listened in silence as the worst excesses of the press were described. The claim that at least 28 NoW journalists were involved in hacking phones was withdrawn by the inquiry QC Robert Jay, however, after Scotland Yard made clear it could not be sure that specific number of journalists had been named in notebooks seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the paper. Neil Garnham QC, for the Metropolitan police, said: "Some of them probably are. For many others, it's impossible, at least thus far, to say whether they were or not." Sherborne concluded by arguing: "Self-regulation through the PCC [Press Complaints Commission], as one of my clients says, is tantamount to handing the police station over to the mafia" – echoing the Labour MP Tom Watson's claim last week that News International was a "mafia organisation". The inquiry has been asked to recommend how the industry should be regulated in the future after the PCC, which is funded by newspapers, accepted News International's assurances in 2009 that phone hacking was the work of a single "rogue reporter". That was widely regarded as proof that the PCC had failed as a regulator. Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor-in-chief, told the inquiry the phone-hacking scandal had exposed the "dogs that didn't bark". Parliament, police, PCC and press all failed to investigate the paper's revelations about hacking, he said. He raised the prospect of the PCC being superseded by a beefed-up body that could mediate in disputes between public and press, which he called "the Press Standards and Mediation Commission". "It could then be a one-stop shop disputes resolution service so that people seldom had to go to law to resolve their differences with newspapers", he said. "It would be quick, responsive and cheap." Leveson hinted he might support such a proposal: "I would like to investigate the idea of having some sort of service that … allows for the resolution of disputes between members of the public and the press short of the courts", he

Phone hacking: Sun's former head of features sues News Corp execs Matt Nixson seeks £100,000 in damages after being abruptly fired from his job on 21 July By Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 November 2011 05.42 EST The Sun's former head of features, who was sacked in July, is suing News Group Newspapers and four members of the News Corporation team investigating phone hacking for wrongful dismissal and breach of contract. Matt Nixson is suing his former employer, News Corp executives Will Lewis and Simon Greenberg, the media group's chief lawyer Jeffrey Palker, and Lord Grabiner QC, the independent chairman of its management and standards committee, for more than £100,000 in damages. Nixson was abruptly fired from his job at the Sun on 21 July when News Corp's internal committee said it uncovered evidence of wrongdoing during his time at the News of the World. Nixson joined the Sun in April 2010 after five years at its now-defunct News International sister title. In documents filed at the high court, seen by MediaGuardian, Nixson denies any involvement in unlawful activity and claims News Corp's independent management and standards committee does not have the power to sack News Group employees. News Group is a subsidiary of News International, which is owned by News Corp. Nixson said in the claim form that a full disciplinary hearing would have exonerated him of any allegations of wrongdoing. The Metropolitan police wrote to News International in September saying it will not be arresting or questioning Nixson as part of its phone-hacking investigation. Nixson filed a separate employment tribunal complaint against News Group for unfair dismissal in September. That tribunal is understood to be on hold while the high court legal action proceeds. The former Sun head of features is seeking damages of more than £100,000, which incorporates 12 months' salary plus additional benefits. The document states that Nixson will face difficulty in finding alternative employment "given the stigma attached to his dismissal and the imputation that he was involved in or otherwise associated with the phone-hacking activities or other criminal newsgathering activities of the News of the World". Nixson was abruptly sacked at a meeting with the Sun's managing editor, Richard Caseby, and Derrick Crowley, the HR director at News Group, on 21 July. The high court claim form says Nixson was not provided with any reason for his dismissal at the meeting, but that the decision had been taken by the management and standards committee following the discovery of emails relating to the journalist's time at the News of the World which were "of interest to the police in their investigations". However, Nixson was not told what was in the emails. In a letter to Nixson two days later, News Group confirmed that he had been dismissed for gross misconduct over the discovery of "what we believe to be direct evidence of criminal conduct". Nixson has consistently denied any wrongdoing. The claim form states: "[Nixson] has never knowingly been involved in any unlawful activity relating to phone-hacking or in any other criminal newsgathering activity. "In particular, he has never intercepted voicemail, email or text messages himself, or conspired with anybody else to intercept voicemail, email or text messages (whether expressly or implicitly), and has never received or used information that he knew or had reason to believe was obtained from intercepted voicemail, email or text messages." News International declined to comment