Douglas Caddy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/nov/10/phone-hacking-james-murdoch-live

Headline: Murdoch junior is prepped for 'assault on credibility'

The Independent

By James Cusick and Cahal Milmo

November 10, 2011

"James Murdoch is being prepped by a litigation specialist to help explain why he failed to tell MP's of discussions he had with the News of the World editor on the 'options' they faced over phone hacking....

"He's facing another tough - and no doubt long - session before the Media Select Committee today. To liven things up if you're watching at home, give yourself a point if he uses any of these phrases:

"Did not have direct knowledge

No recollection

Can you repeat?

Difficult for me to comment

Regret

Financial quantum

Not in a position to answer

Humble

Before I was involved

Happy to supply answer

Co-operate fully

Matters for current criminal investigation

Not to my knowledge

Approved threshold

Procedural question

Due process

Transparency

If I can clarify

Documentary information"

Neville Thurlbeck rejects request to help phone-hacking investigation

Former News of the World chief reporter was asked by Scotland Yard to give evidence against News International

By Roy Greenslade

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 9 November 2011 15.30 EST Article

The News of the World's former chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, has rejected a request by Metropolitan police officers to help in their phone-hacking investigation.

Scotland Yard asked him whether or not he would be prepared to give evidence against News International, but he has rejected the request.

It is known that the police took key documents from Thurlbeck's home when he was taken into custody on 5 April. Among them is said to be a copy of a 2009 memo which Thurlbeck says he sent to the paper's former editor, Colin Myler, and its legal manager, Tom Crone, in which he made serious allegations about a News of the World executive's involvement in hacking.

The dossier is also said to contain a tape-recorded phone call made by Thurlbeck to Ross Hindley, the junior reporter who transcribed the "For Neville" email that has been the focus of the hacking investigation. Thurlbeck had tracked Hindley down to Peru. During the call, which he taped, he is believed to have made allegations against the same executive. The police now have a transcript of that call.

This latest twist in the saga comes the day before the News International chairman, James Murdoch, is to appear before the Commons media select committee for a second time. He has been recalled because of discrepancies between his previous account of a crucial meeting with Myler and Crone about the "For Neville" email, and their version of events.

Ever since that email emerged in public, Thurlbeck has said that he was unaware of its provenance. He says it was read to him over the phone and that he never saw or read the contents.

He has broken cover after meeting two senior Met officers last Friday. Though they were not part of the Operation Weeting team devoted to investigating the hacking affair, he claims they were empowered to offer him a deal in which he might have obtained some form of immunity from prosecution in return for giving them evidence.

He was told that the offer, itself contingent on the information being deemed to be in the public interest, was made under the Serious Organised Crime Act 2005. In such cases, the final decision is taken by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

It is understood that Thurlbeck refused the offer because he was convinced he could prove his innocence and wished to clear his name in an above-board fashion.

The heart of his claim is that his warnings about hacking activities stretching beyond the so-called "rogue reporter" – the ex-News of the World royal editor Clive Goodmnan – were ignored by the paper's senior executives.

Thurlbeck is one of 16 people arrested on suspicion of taking part in phone hacking, most of whom have been placed on bail until March next year. He spent 21 years at the News of the World, as a reporter and, briefly as news editor.

In explaining why he rejected the police offer to give evidence against his former colleagues, Thurlbeck said: "I have informed Scotland Yard that while I fully understand and respect the reason for their request of me to give evidence for the crown in any prosecution arising from Operation Weeting, it is my opinion that a detailed and forensic inquiry into my working methods by what is a highly-professional police unit will fully exonerate me. So, on that basis, I have declined their offer."

In September, Thurlbeck lodged a claim for unfair dismissal against News International after he was sacked. The company has stopped paying his legal fees.

He has spoken about the News of the World newsroom's working methods, saying "reporting teams operated rather like IRA cells". He said: "We were assigned to stories and given specific details, but we didn't know where the tips came from."

He told of an occasion when his team were told by the news desk exactly when and where they would find a person they were required to interview or photograph. "This information was remarkably detailed," he said. "In many cases, reporters would be sent by an executive to intercept people at very specific locations and they would be taken by surprise.

"They were often baffled how we had found them and to be honest, so were we. We just assumed the executive had received a tip-off. But we wouldn't know for certain as they kept their cards very close to their chest."

Ten questions for James Murdoch

James Murdoch is to face MPs' questions over what he knew and when during the News of the World phone-hacking scandal

By Dan Sabbagh

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 9 November 2011 17.37 EST

James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch and Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corporation is to face MPs questions over the phone-hacking scandal.

1 Clive Goodman, the jailed former royal reporter, wrote in March 2007 to your predecessor that phone hacking "was widely discussed at the daily editorial conference". Why did you not ask to review the Goodman file?

2 Why did you not ask to see Michael Silverleaf's opinion of June 2008 which said there was "a culture of illegal information access" at the News of the World after you were briefed on it orally?

3 Do you believe internal evidence about phone hacking such as the Goodman letter and the Silverleaf opinion was withheld from you? And by whom?

4 Why do you maintain you were not told about the "for Neville" email when both Colin Myler and Tom Crone say it was the sole reason for asking you to authorise the six-figure settlement of the Gordon Taylor case?

5 Why did you not ask why Mulcaire had admitted in court to hacking people such as Elle MacPherson and Simon Hughes who would not have been of interest to Goodman who was put on trial with him? Did those targets not suggest to you that hacking may be more widespread?

6 What were you told were the reasons for reaching a £1m settlement with Max Clifford in March 2010? Did you ask why it was necessary to settle that case.

7 When the Guardian first reported in July 2009 that "thousands" of mobile phones had been targeted, News International responded with an aggressive denial of the allegations. Why did you allow News International to make that statement?

8 Why were NI employees allowed to ask a private investigator to conduct surveillance of the lawyers bringing cases against your company? Why did you not know about a practice you say you do not condone?

9 Did you authorise the severance payment for Rebekah Brooks, which is understood to be in excess of £1.7m? Why do executives who resign and are subsequently arrested deemed worthy of a severance payment?

10 Do you believe you were sufficiently curious about what was going on at the company you ran? Does this make you a fit and proper person to run a media company?

Phone hacking: News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck warned hacking was widespread

Detectives investigating phone hacking at have seized a dossier of evidence which apparently shows Neville Thurlbeck warned the paper's editor two years ago that phone hacking was widespread.

Neville Thurlbeck refused to comment on claims that he sent Mr Myler and Mr Crone a memo pinpointing Edmondson

Daily Telegraph

By Mark Hughes, Crime Correspondent

5:56PM GMT 09 Nov 2011

Documents taken from the home of Thurlbeck are said to include a memo he wrote to Colin Myler, the paper’s former editor, and Tom Crone, the ex head of legal, telling them that Ian Edmondson, the news editor, was involved in phone hacking.

The evidence uncovered by the Metropolian Police has emerged as James Murdoch, the chairman of News International, appears before MPs for a second time on Thursday.

It is now alleged that senior News of the World executives failed to act on numerous warnings over the scale of phone hacking under Mr Murdoch's chairmanship of News International.

Detectives hope that Mr Thurlbeck will now become a key prosecution witness and have offered him immunity.

Thurlbeck, 50, is thought to have met with police last Friday where he was asked to consider providing evidence against some of his former colleagues.

However, he has told the Daily Telegraph that he has rejected the offer, believing that the police investigation will ultimately exonerate him.

The offer, however, shows that following the apparent discovery of his dossier detectives now believe that Thurlbeck is potentially more useful as a witness that a suspect.

Thurlbeck, who is currently on police bail after being arrested in April, is believed to have written the memo in July 2009 telling the executives that Edmondson was behind the hacking of Gordon Taylor’s phone.

He is also believed to have provided a taped recording of a conversation between himself and Ross Hall, the junior reporter who transcribed the voicemail which was in the now infamous ‘for Neville’ email.

In the tape Hall is believed to say that it was Edmondson, not Thurlbeck, who had commissioned the hacking.

He is said to have sent the memo two days before Mr Crone and Mr Myler appeared at a parliamentary committee to say there was no evidence that hacking went beyond Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the reporter and private investigator who were jailed in January 2007.

Mr Crone and Mr Myler are already facing claims they were told that hacking went wider than a lone “rogue reporter” in 2008 when Michael Silverleaf QC sent a letter saying there was “overwhelming evidence” that other reporters were involved.

The Daily Telegraph has now been told that, as well as being told by external lawyers, the News of the World executives were apparently told by their own chief reporter that hacking was being orchestrated by the news desk and, in particular, Edmondson.

The fact that Thurlbeck’s warning was sounded during James Murdoch’s watch will intensify pressure on the News International chief.

He is due to give evidence to MPs tomorrow. He is now likely to be asked whether Thurlbeck’s dossier was ever mentioned to him.

Contacted by the Daily Telegraph, Thurlbeck refused to comment on claims that he sent Mr Myler and Mr Crone a memo pinpointing Edmondson.

On the topic of potential immunity, he said: “I have told the police that while I fully understand and respect the reason for their request, it is my opinion that a detailed and forensic inquiry into my working methods will fully exonerate me. On that basis, I will not be giving evidence for the Crown.”

Spokesmen for the Metropolitan Police and News International both refused to comment.

NoW's alleged surveillance targets range from royalty to sport

Prince William, Angelina Jolie and Sir Alex Ferguson among figures private eye Derek Webb was allegedly asked to follow

By James Robinson

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 9 November 2011 08.24 EST

The list of people that private investigator Derek Webb claims to have followed on the instructions of the News of the World includes prominent public figures from the worlds of sport, showbusiness, politics, the media and royalty.

They include Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, former Labour cabinet ministers Alan Johnson and Charles Clarke and Hollywood actors Sienna Miller and Angelina Jolie.

Channel 4 News last night published a list of 153 names Webb was allegedly asked to follow by the now defunct News International title from 2003 to 2011, with the identities of members of the public removed.

The list appears to show that the paper was using Webb to gather information at various times about the people who the News of the World's readers would be most interested in reading about. MediaGuardian has grouped them by industry and listed them alphabetically.

Crime

Maxine Carr

Law

Charlotte Harris

Grace Ononiwu

Newspapers/publishing

Anna Fazackerley (journalist)

Kimberley Fortier (former Spectator publisher)

Simon Hoggart (Guardian journalist)

Zoe Williams (Guardian journalist)

Politics

Alan Johnson MP

Bob Crow

Boris Johnson

Charles Clarke (ex MP)

Charles Kennedy (MP)

Chris Huhne (MP)

Clare Short (ex MP)

David Blunkett (MP)

David Milliband (MP)

Derek Draper

Eric Joyce (MP)

Geoff Hoon (ex MP)

Harriet Harman MP

Hilary Perrin (Labour party official)

Justine Greening (MP)

Lord Archer

Lord Goldsmith

Lord Irvine

Lord Macdonald

Mike Hancock (MP)

Philip Woolas (ex MP)

Shabana Mahmood (MP)

Shahid Malik (ex MP)

Stephen Twigg MP

Tom Watson MP

Sport

Alan Shearer

Alex Ferguson

Andy Gray

Ashley Cole

Benjamin Mwarawairi (footballer)

Chris Coleman

Danny Cipriani

David Beckham

Fernando Torres

Frank Bruno

Frank Lampard

Gary Lineker

Gordon Taylor

Ian Wright

James Cracknell (Olympic rower)

Joanne Armstrong

John Motson

John Terry

Jose Mourinho

Keven Pieterson

Lee Chapman

Mark Bosnich

Michelle Lineker (former wife of Gary Lineker)

Paul Gascoigne

Peter Kenyon

Rio Ferdinand

Simon Jordan

Ted Terry (father of John Terry)

Tony Pulis·

Lord Coe

Showbusiness

Angelina Jolie

Beverly Turner

Daniel Radcliffe

Daniel Radcliffe's parents

Elle MacPherson

Gary Glitter

George Michael

Heather Mills

Lulu

Ms Dynamite

Paul McCartney

Peaches Geldof

Peter Andre

Rik Mayall

Ronan Keating

Sienna Miller

Simon Cowell

Sophie Anderton

Royalty/aristocracy

Chelsy Davy

Duke of Westminster

Earl Spencer

Paul Burrell

Prince Harry

Prince William

Television

Ainsley Harriott

Alan Titchmarsh

Amie Buck (former The X Factor contestant)

Ben Freeman (former soap star)

Chris Tarrant

Connie Fisher (talent show winner)

Delia Smith

Gaby Logan

Gloria De Piero (ex GMTV political correspondent, now an MP)

Gordon Ramsey

Grant Bovey (husband of Anthea Turner)

Jackiey Budden (mother of Jade Goody)

Jane Goldman (wife of Jonathan Ross)

Jessie Wallace

Johnny Vaughan

Leslie Grantham

Nigella Lawson

Paul Ross

Phillip Schofield

Pollyanna Woodward (TV presenter)

Richard Hammond

Richard Madeley

Steve Arnold (former soap star)·

Steve McFadden

Sue Cleaver (soap star)

Sir Trevor McDonald

Vanya Seager (former wife of Robson Green)

Phone hacking: police have told fewer than one in eight potential victims

Some 638 of 5,800 possible victims have been contacted by Met, highlighting how far the investigation has still to run

By Lisa O'Carroll guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 9 November 2011 09.13 EST

Fewer than one in eight of the potential News of the World phone-hacking victims have been contacted by Scotland Yard to confirm there is evidence that their voicemails may have been intercepted.

Of the possible 5,800 hacking victims identified so far, 638 have been contacted by officers working on the inquiry to confirm that their phones may have been hacked.

The relatively small number shows how far the investigation has to run before it completes its analysis of about 11,000 pages of notes seized from the home of Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World investigator at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal.

"It is an ongoing investigation, you can only go as fast as the evidence allows you," said a Met spokesman.

Scotland Yard said those contacted were a mixture of people who its officers had identified and of people who had come forward suspecting their voicemails had been intercepted by Mulcaire.

"To date officers from Operation Weeting have contacted or been contacted by 1,833 people. It has been established that the names of 638 of these 1,833 people have appeared in material being analysed by police and may therefore have been victims of phone hacking," the Met added.

The figures also undermine News International's efforts to settle phone-hacking cases out of court. Last week it launched a voluntary compensation scheme for potential victims, but solicitors have queried what proof a potential victim can supply to the company when the police investigation is ongoing.

Scotland Yard's phone-hacking investigation, Operation Weeting, has been going since January and is staffed by 45 full-time detectives.

In July Met deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, who is running the inquiry, revealed that 150 people had been told they were potential victims. The latest figure means they have now contacted four times as many.

Last week, the Guardian revealed that the number of possible victims was now close to 5,800. This is 2,000 more than previously identified by detectives tasked with trawling through 11,000 pages of notes seized from Mulcaire's home.

It is known that Mulcaire kept meticulous notes of his activities, with names of potential targets and of those whose messages he may have intercepted.

A summary of his notes will be published by the Leveson inquiry into press ethics. The names of any News of the World journalists in his notes – the so called "corner names", where he wrote who at the paper had commissioned a particular person to be hacked – will be anonymised, Leveson said this week.

It will be the first time his notes will be discussed in such detail in any public forum since they were seized in 2006.

Leveson said he also intended to ask the police for a summary of the progress of their investigation. Names of suspects will be anonymised.

James Murdoch to Face More Questioning by Lawmakers

The New York Times

By SARAH LYALL and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

November 9, 2011

LONDON — James Murdoch may have embarrassing questions to answer when he returns to Westminster on Thursday to testify before a parliamentary committee investigating the phone hacking scandal that has engulfed the News Corporation. Documents released since his first round of testimony in July have cast doubt on his version of events, while fresh revelations have spilled out about his company’s questionable practices.

Mr. Murdoch, the company’s deputy chief operating officer and the younger son of its chairman, Rupert Murdoch, was a deft and deflecting witness in July, nimbly parrying lawmakers’ questions while maintaining essentially that he had learned only recently how widespread the hacking problem really was. Now, he will be faced with defending himself against mounting evidence that top executives at News International, the company’s British newspaper arm, knew a full three years ago that hacking was pervasive at The News of the World, the tabloid newspaper that the company shut down in July, and that the executives discussed it with Mr. Murdoch at the time.

“Obviously, there are things which the committee wishes to raise with him, particularly in relation to some of the evidence we have received since he testified,” said John Whittingdale, a Conservative member of Parliament and chairman of the committee holding the hearings, the select committee on culture, media and sport.

Mr. Murdoch will also be asked about News International’s behavior after the investigation into its hacking operation intensified. The company acknowledged this week that over the past year and a half, The News of the World had hired a private investigator to conduct covert surveillance of two lawyers representing victims of phone hacking.

The admission was prompted by a report in The Guardian that the investigator, Derek Webb, followed and photographed the lawyers and their families, presumably in the hope of unearthing unsavory information about them and using it to discourage them from pursing their cases.

“While surveillance is not illegal, it was clearly deeply inappropriate in these circumstances,” the company said in a statement. “This action was not condoned by any current executive at the company.”

Mr. Webb told the BBC that he had done such work for The News of the World routinely for eight years, spying on dozens of people, including Prince William; the sports broadcaster Gary Lineker; Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general; Chelsy Davy, Prince Harry’s former girlfriend; José Morinho, the former manager of the Chelsea soccer team; and the parents of the actor Daniel Radcliffe.

“I was working for them extensively on many jobs throughout that time,” Mr. Webb told the network. “They phoned me up by the day or by the night.”

Recently released News of the World documents, some of them obtained by the parliamentary committee from News International’s former lawyers, Farrer & Company, show that on June 3, 2008, a lawyer warned company executives in a memo that there was “a powerful case that there is (or was) a culture of illegal information access” at the paper.

The lawyer, Michael Silverleaf, also said there was “overwhelming evidence of the involvement of a number of senior journalists” in the paper’s attempts to illegally obtain information about Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association.

Mr. Silverleaf’s memo was written at a time when top News International executives, including James Murdoch, were mulling over how to respond to Mr. Taylor’s claim that his voice mail messages had been repeatedly hacked by the News of the World. Mr. Silverleaf counseled them to handle the case privately. “To have this paraded at a public trial would, I imagine, be extremely damaging” to the company, he said.

Even more potentially worrying for Mr. Murdoch is the growing body of evidence that other executives discussed newly discovered details of phone hacking at the paper with him around the same time.

For example, a May 27 note by Julian Pike, a Farrer & Company lawyer, says that Colin Myler, the editor of The News of the World, spoke to Mr. Murdoch about Mr. Taylor’s claims and that the two men decided to refer it to outside counsel. Another note two weeks later — after Mr. Silverleaf wrote his damning conclusions — says that after meeting Tom Crone, who was the legal manager of News International at the time, Mr. Murdoch “said he wanted to think through options” about how to proceed in the case.

Several days later, Mr. Murdoch authorized News International to pay Mr. Taylor more than £450,000 ($725,000) and legal fees exceeding $322,000. Mr. Pike has said that Mr. Murdoch personally authorized the amount, in exchange for a pledge of confidentiality, to keep the matter from being made public.

Tom Watson, a Labour member of the parliamentary committee and a persistent critic of News International, said that the panel would question Mr. Murdoch further about the Taylor settlement.

“It’s a curious bit about James Murdoch saying he wants to think about his options” — options that included “making a large payment to keep this quiet,” Mr. Watson said.

Mr. Murdoch, 38, has been seen for some time as his 80-year-old father’s heir apparent at the top of the sprawling News Corporation media empire. He got a vote of confidence last week when Chase Carey, News Corporation’s chief operating officer, said he was doing a “good job.”

On Thursday, though, Mr. Murdoch’s credibility may be on the line. He has always maintained that when he authorized the Taylor payment, he was acting on the advice of lawyers and had no reason to believe that hacking had gone beyond the actions of a single “rogue reporter” — Clive Goodman, the former royal reporter at The News of the World, who was jailed in 2007 for intercepting private voice mail messages of members of the royal household. But the lawyers’ notes indicate that Mr. Murdoch had several discussions with other executives who knew that the hacking was more widespread before he agreed to the settlement with Mr. Taylor.

Mr. Myler and Mr. Crone came forward over the summer to dispute Mr. Murdoch’s July testimony, telling the committee that they informed Mr. Murdoch of a damning e-mail marked “for Neville” — a reference to Neville Thurlbeck, The News of the World’s chief reporter, who was given transcripts of illicitly intercepted phone messages.

On May 24, 2008, Mr. Crone sent a letter summarizing the case to Mr. Myler, the paper’s editor, to help him prepare for his “planned chat with chief exec James Murdoch.” In the memo, Mr. Crone describes the “for Neville” e-mail as “fatal to our case.” He adds: “The position is perilous. The damning e-mail is genuine.”

In his July testimony, Mr. Murdoch denied knowing about the “for Neville” e-mail.

The committee also plans to ask about a report by The Guardian last weekend that Rebekah Brooks, the former News International chief executive who was arrested in July on suspicion of phone hacking and illegal payments to police officers, received a severance package of more than $2 million, an office and a car and driver when she resigned from News International.

A spokesman for Ms. Brooks did not return calls seeking comment.

A spokeswoman for News Corporation said she could not comment on Ms. Brooks’s severance agreement or on what James Murdoch did or did not know. “Whatever he has to say, I think it’s appropriate that he says it to the committee on Thursday,” she said.

Widow of Opportunity

Reaction to the recent release of Jacqueline Kennedys half-century-old conversations with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. focused largely on a winsomely innocent reverence for her husband. The author sees a different Jackie: savvy, manipulative, disingenuousand lacking the class for which she was so admired.

By Christopher Hitchens

Vanity Fair Magazine

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/hitchens-201112

If you were to set a competition for the headline most unlikely to appear in an American magazine, the winning entry would surely be JACKIE TACKY or TACKY JACKIE. In her life and even posthumously, it always somehow fell to Jackie Kennedy to raise the tone. An exacting task in her case, and exquisitely so when one appreciates that she had to raise the tone without ever actually admitting that the tone could use a bit of raising. But it was always implicitly acknowledged that a dash of Bouvier was needed, like a tincture of yeast in the lump, to refine the rather coarse mixture of The Last Hurrah and bootleg that was the original Kennedy patrimony. And the new First Ladya working title she disliked, incidentallypossessed just that hint of class that is respected by the mass. (You may wish to attempt enunciating my last phrasing in the tones of Hyannis or Back Bay or Harvard.)

Yet now, reading and listening through her half-century-old sit-downs with the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., recorded shortly after her husbands assassination, I am once again visited with that vague feeling that the lovely widow has actually rather lowered the tone. Much of the commentary on Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy has focused on the self-subordinating, near-doormat opinion that Jackie voiced of her own status as a wife. Enhanced by the unexpected breathiness of her voice (almost Marilyn-like on some portions of the tape), the avowal of being confined to an awful Victorian or Asiatic kind of marriage, or a Japanese one, as Schlesinger prompts her to say, has upset her granddaughters and those ladies on The View, who believe in the tradition of strong womanhood. But when examined carefully and in context, the pouting refusal to have any ideas except those supplied by her lord and master turns out not to be evidence of winsome innocence but a soft cover for a specific sort of knowingness and calculation.

Left out of the boys conversation and kept in the dark, eh? She tells Schlesinger, when the subject of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights is raised, that she regards Dr. King as a moral monster who goes as far as to arrange orgies in Washington hotels. She can have been in a position to say this only if, as a special treat, she had been cut in on the salacious surveillance tapes by which J. Edgar Hoover kept the enemies of the Kennedy clan (and Kennedy himself) under his thumb. This was the rawest and raunchiest underside of access to crude power. It has to make one ask how much else she knew, about the presidents stupefying consumption of uppers and downers, for examplerather difficult to conceal from a wifelet alone how often she had to close her eyes or her ears as the door practically banged on the heels of a departing mistress or hooker (or Sam Giancanas moll Judith Exner).

Bambi-like looks notwithstanding, it sure was the sexual channel along which she directed her antennae. And quite a wised-up channel at that: why would tough babes such as Clare Boothe Luce and Madame Nhu seem to care seriously about the politics of the politicians they championed? Did such ardent attachment, Mrs. Kennedy speculated, suggest the heated effect of Sapphos incandescent verses:

Madame Nhu tearing all around, saying things about him [President Kennedy]I suppose she was more of an irritant. But once I asked him, Why are these women like her and Clare Luce, who both obviously are attracted to men, why are theywhy do they have this queer thing for power? She was everything Jack found unattractivethat I found unattractive in a woman. And he said, Its strange, he said, but its because they resent getting their power through men. And so they become reallyjust hating men, whatever you call that. She was rather like Clare Luce. (whispers) I wouldnt be surprised if they were lesbians.

While Jackie was not always wrong by any means when it came to rendering a thumbnail of some dame (clichés they may be, but you cant dispense with lemons and prunes when analyzing the chemical composition of Mrs. Gandhi), its still slightly off-putting to find her so eagerly searching for the bitch-slap put-down (She is a real prunebitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman), based on experience she can have gained only by accepting the role of insider and distinctly relishing it. Michael Beschloss, who has steered this frail craft of last-sip publishing into harbor, may have overstepped himself as a historian by saying that the tapes show Jackie as a major player in the Kennedy administration. But they certainly make it difficult if not impossible to accept her at her own paradoxical valuation, as merely a self-effacing hostess and decorator.

If the subject were being a major player in establishing the popular reputation of the Kennedy administration, that would be an entirely different story. With amazingly professional velocity, she seized control of the image-making process and soon had an entire cadre of historians and super-journos honing and burnishing the script. And there again, as I revisit it, comes that weird feeling that the taste and style pressure were being exerted very slightly downward.

Take the single example that everybody knows best: the notorious interview she gave to Lifes Theodore H. White and the way in which it forced even cautious academic historians into emplacing a showbiz promotion into the heart of the American discourse. Here it is as Life magazine printed it while the hoofbeats died away, on December 6, 1963:

When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical, but Im so ashamed of myselfall I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy. At night, before wed go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records; and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record. The lines he loved to hear were: Dont let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.

She liked that closing line so much that she insisted that White repeat it, and enshrine it, which he very thoroughly did, even ending his article with it. Now consider: The nation has just buried a president whose books were replete with the language of valor and grandeurfit rhetoric for Profiles in Courage. Arlington cemetery has been garlanded as never in the century. The bugle calls can still be heard wafting on the air. And then: Oh, mercy me, why do I worry my pretty little head?why, all I can call to mind is some plonking ditty from Lerner and Loewe that even the Broadway critics found a tad paltry. Odd, when you reflect upon it, that her first instinct was for the popular, the kitsch, and the second-rate. (And can you imagine what the Hyannis crowd would have said if Mamie Eisenhower and Pat Nixon had admitted to the same writhe-making cultural preferences?)

Then the inevitable second thought arrives: Shes the only possible witness to this supposed wish for posterity. Nothing else in the interview is vindicated by truth. (She was horrified by the stories that she might live abroad…. Im going to live in the places I lived with Jack. ) The other opinions expressed are patently insincere (The Johnsons are wonderful, theyve been wonderful to me). Her need to make an immediate impression is evidently very strong. And yet her very first concern is to keep things within the mental and aesthetic grasp of the average, to reduce the horizon and shrink the frontier.

I suppose it depends on what makes you cringe. On the tape we hear the patter of tiny feet, and its little John-John scampering into the room. With amazing effronteryand just three months after the presidents deathArthur Schlesinger inquires what happened to his father. The little boy responds that hes gone to heaven. Not yet content, Schlesinger asks the absurd question Do you remember him?, to which the kid replies first, Yeah, and second, I dont remember any-thing. I dont even want to suspect that this little encounter was choreographed to the slightest degree. But somehow, if it was … At any rate, there can be little doubt that, throughout the taping, Mrs. Kennedy was in permanent and vigilant damage-control mode. She maintains the often exploded falsehood that her husband, and not his trusted consigliere Theodore Sorensen, was the true author of Profiles in Courage, which had earned the aspirant candidate an attention-getting Pulitzer. And she stoutly maintains that the new president wrote his own inaugural address, when it has been well established that the weightier hands on the manuscript were those of Adlai Stevenson and John Kenneth Galbraith. In sticking to the party/clan line in this way, moreover, she doesnt just exhibit faith in her husbands undiluted talents. She evinces a sound working knowledge of all the infighting and backbiting that accompanied both plagiarism scandals. In fact, or in retrospect, this awareness that it wasnt a safe subject may have impelled her, in that White interview, to steer attention away from the classical and noble invocations of Profiles and toward the safer destination of light opera.

You dont have to be a cynic to detect something stale and contrived in any further milking of the Camelot tale and its sole author. Recent years have seen the departure of Schlesinger and Sorensen from the scene, and a continued slow erosion of the old bodyguard of liars, prepared at least to xxxxx themselves with their swords as they contested any additional unwelcome disclosures about what had sometimes gone on down Camelot way. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library is now renowned among presidential and other scholars as the most obstructive and politicized of the lot. The opening of hitherto sealed official archives and rec-ords has tended to remove rather than to add luster to the magic years of 196063, germinal soil for the later misery of Vietnam. A truly deft Kennedy apologist might decide that a period of relative reticence would be advisable.

And so might holding it down a bit on the knockoffs and the franchises. For some people, the 1996 public auction of Mrs. Kennedys private effects, down to the most trivial and tangential (such as her Hermès hairbrush), was when the wrong scent began somehow to cling to the business. For others, it was Caroline Kennedys release in 2001 of a volume fragrantly titled The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which one hopes would not have seduced the incautious purchaser into supposing that the First Lady had ever extended herself into verse. If they did fall for that, then at least they got some quite decent poems that, at one time or another, Jackie had indeed best loved. Certainly a superior bargain to the buying of Why England Slept (an account of Britains moral collapse in the face of Hitler), rushed into print in 1940 by the evil patriarch Joseph Kennedy and passed off as the work of J.F.K. Again, it turns out that full and proper credit may not have been given to the books chief author, the biddable journalist Arthur Krock. In presidential terms, plagiarism is not high among the list of vices. In fact, its so rare as to seem almost … sophisticated. And yet, kleptomania is among the most vulgar of crimes. Better on the whole, though, not to make it into a family failing. And even plagiarism is to be preferred to the recycling of mythical or distorted history. It could be that very element that caused Mrs. Kennedy, given so many chances to uphold a gold standard, to discard it in favor of the reverse alchemy now on show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9jJGbokSWY

8 November 2011 Last updated at 13:30 ET

Dossier shows NoW surveillance on massive scale

Prince William was followed in 2006

BBC News

A dossier of evidence obtained by BBC Newsnight from an ex-policeman hired by the News of The World (NoW) shows the newspaper was engaged in covert surveillance on an industrial scale.

Over eight years Derek Webb was paid to follow more than 100 targets.

They included Prince William, Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy, former attorney general Lord Goldsmith and football manager Jose Mourinho.

The now-defunct paper's owner News International has yet to comment.

Along with celebrities like football pundit Gary Lineker, relatives of celebrities - such as the parents of actor Daniel Radcliffe - were also targeted.

Mr Webb says he is not ashamed of his actions and that he did nothing illegal.

Speaking exclusively to Newsnight's Richard Watson, he said that shortly after setting up his own private detective agency in 2003 he was contacted by the NoW and offered work.

He continued to work for the newspaper until it was shut down in July after a string of allegations emerged about the hacking of phones, including that of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

"I was working for them extensively on many jobs throughout that time. I never knew when I was going to be required. They phoned me up by the day or by the night... It could be anywhere in the country."

Mr Webb is a former police officer who worked for many years in covert surveillance and received additional training from MI5.

He said he felt the paper should have given him "loyalty money" for his eight years of service when it closed - as it had done for other freelancers - but it refused.

Target selection

Mr Webb said that most of the time he received his commissions over the phone, but sometimes he was also e-mailed photographs or address details to assist him in his work. The approaches came from a number of journalists at the paper, he said.

"I got calls from numerous journalists on the news desk," Mr Webb said.

The private detective said that 90% of his targets were celebrities or politicians.

In 2006 Mr Webb was asked to follow Prince William when the prince was spending a number of days in Gloucestershire.

It was also in 2006 that Mr Webb covertly followed Gary Lineker, a job which lasted a number of weeks.

Lord Goldsmith was followed by Mr Webb whilst he was attorney general for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

And on occasion the surveillance was not restricted to celebrities or public figures, but the people that surrounded them - Mr Webb's records show that in the last two years he was hired to follow the parents of Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe.

Detailed logs

Mr Webb kept detailed logs of his movements and observations while on surveillance jobs, which Newsnight has seen.

"Basically I would write down what they were wearing at the time, what car they were in, who they met, the location they met, the times - the times were very important - and I would keep that.

"And then I would transfer part of it into my diary, but not the actual log itself. Just the names of the people."

Mr Webb said he never asked his contacts at the newspaper why they had selected the targets for surveillance.

He also defended his work for the newspaper pointing out that what he had done was legal.

"The News of The World employed me to do a job, I did the job to the best of my ability. I didn't infringe on private ground, on private property... I never did anything which is unlawful," he said.

Mr Webb said that he was not concerned by the nature of his work:

"I don't feel ashamed. I know to a certain extent people's lives have been ruined with front page stories but... if I wasn't doing it, somebody else would have been."

Watch Richard Watson's full report in which the names of more News of the World surveillance targets will be revealed on Newsnight at 22:30 GMT on Tuesday, 8 November 2011, then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.

Prince William 'among News of the World surveillance targets'

Daily Telegraph

6:26PM GMT 08 Nov 2011

A private investigator carried out surveillance of Prince William and scores of other targets for the News of the World, it was claimed tonight.

In 2006 Mr Webb was asked to follow Prince William when he was spending a number of days in Gloucestershire

Derek Webb was paid to follow and record the movements of celebrities picked by the newspaper's staff, the BBC reported.

The investigator told Newsnight: "Basically I would write down what they were wearing at the time, what car they were in, who they met, the location they met, the times – the times were very important – and I would keep that.

"And then I would transfer part of it into my diary, but not the actual log itself. Just the names of the people."

A spokesman for the Duke of Cambridge declined to comment.

Mr Webb told the broadcaster that over eight years he was paid to follow more than 90 targets including former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and football pundit Gary Lineker.

Relatives, such as the parents of actor Daniel Radcliffe, were also targeted, he said.

In 2006 Mr Webb was asked to follow the Prince when he was spending a number of days in Gloucestershire, it was claimed.

The investigator, a former policeman, told Newsnight: "I was working for them extensively on many jobs throughout that time.

"I never knew when I was going to be required.

"They phoned me up by the day or by the night ... It could be anywhere in the country."

Carrying out surveillance is not illegal and is not new for journalists or private investigators.

Mr Webb added: "I got calls from numerous journalists on the news desk."

The private detective said that 90% of his targets were celebrities or politicians.

It was also in 2006 that Mr Webb covertly followed Gary Lineker, a job which lasted a number of weeks, the BBC reported

News of the World paid me to follow 90 people, claims private detective

Former policeman says he surveilled figures including Prince William and the parents of Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe

By Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Tuesday 8 November 2011 13.33 EST

A private detective has claimed the News of the World paid him to target more than 90 people, including Prince William, former attorney general Lord Goldsmith and the parents of Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe, for eight years until it was shut down in July.

Derek Webb, a former policeman who said he started working for the News of the World shortly after setting up his own private detective agency in 2003, has told the BBC's Newsnight he continued to carry out surveillance for the News International title until it was closed at the height of the phone-hacking scandal.

The investigator said he was paid by the paper to follow more than 90 targets including Prince William, Goldsmith, Radcliffe's parents and Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker.

"I was working for them extensively on many jobs throughout that time. I never knew when I was going to be required. They phone me up by the day or by the night… it could be anywhere in the country," Webb told Newsnight's Richard Watson, in a report to be broadcast on the BBC2 daily current affairs show on Tuesday night.

In 2006 he was asked to follow Prince William while he spent a few days in Gloucestershire.

A former police officer, Webb worked for many years on covert surveillance and had some training from MI5.

He told the BBC he set up his own detective agency in 2003 and was approached shortly after that by the News of the World.

Most of commissions were over the phone, but sometimes he was sent photographs or address details to work from. The orders came from several journalists on the paper, he reveals.

Like Glenn Mulcaire, the other private investigator known to have been used extensively by the News of the World, Webb kept detailed notes of his movements.

"Basically I would write down what they were wearing at the time, what car they were in, who they met, the location they met, the times – the times were very important – and I would keep that.

"And then I would transfer part of it into my diary, but not the actual log itself. Just the names of the people," says Webb.

He said 90% of his targets were celebrities and politicians and that he got calls from "numerous journalists on the news desk".

The BBC said the names of more News of the World surveillance targets would be revealed in Tuesday's Newsnight.

His claims will further add to claims that the News of the World targeted celebrities, royals, politicians and victims of crime on an industrial scale.

The Guardian revealed on Monday that the News of the World had also paid Webb to to run covert surveillance on two of the lawyers representing phone-hacking victims as part of an operation to put pressure on them to stop their work.

Webb secretly videoed Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris as well as family members and associates. Evidence suggests it was part of an attempt to gather evidence for false smears about their private lives.

Last week the Metropolitan police confirmed that the number of possible victims of phone hacking by Mulcaire is now close to 5,800.

This is 2,000 more than previously identified by detectives tasked with trawling through 11,000 pages of notes seized from Mulcaire's home.

Deleted.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread773044/pg1&flagit=773044

News of the World hired private eye to spy on phone hacking victims' lawyers

Daily Telegraph

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter

8:13PM GMT 07 Nov 2011

A private investigator hired by the News of the World carried out covert surveillance on two lawyers representing phone-hacking victims as part of an apparent plan to smear them.

The investigator spied on Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris, as well as members of their families, to compile a “dossier” about their private lives.

Last night News International, which published the News of the World, admitted to carrying out surveillance on the two lawyers, which it described as “deeply inappropriate”.

James Murdoch, who was in his current role as executive chairman of News International at the time the surveillance took place, is likely to be asked whether he knew about it when he makes a second appearance before a committee of MPs on Thursday.

The Daily Telegraph has been told that an internal News International memo unearthed by police suggests that one of the reasons the two solicitors were targeted was because the company was trying to protect Andy Coulson, the former editor who became the Conservative Party’s head of communications.

NI executives were desperate to avoid “negative publicity” which could bring down Mr Coulson. He resigned from his Downing Street post earlier this year despite denying any knowledge of phone hacking.

In September Tom Crone, a former senior lawyer at the News of the World, confirmed he had seen a file on two of the phone hacking claimants’ lawyers which “involves their private lives”.

It has now emerged that Derek Webb, a former policeman who regularly carried out surveillance work for the News of the World, was hired by the now-defunct tabloid in early 2010 to gather evidence on Mr Lewis.

Mr Webb told the BBC he watched Mr Lewis’s ex-wife and filmed her with her daughter as they went shopping and visited a garden centre near their home in Manchester.

Mr Lewis had represented Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, who was paid £700,000 compensation by the News of the World after it admitted his phone had been hacked.

He went on to represent several other high-profile victims, including the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

In January 2011 Mr Webb was reportedly hired to spy on Miss Harris to find evidence of an alleged affair with Mr Lewis, for whom she worked at the time. The allegation was entirely bogus.

Other investigators were also reportedly hired, and followed her with her two young children and obtained copies of their birth certificates.

Miss Harris was being followed at a time when she was representing the football agent Sky Andrew, whose case uncovered information that led to the sacking of the News of the World’s news editor, Ian Edmondson.

Exactly what the News of the World intended to do with the information is unclear, but emails recovered by Scotland Yard investigators suggest the newspaper was determined to stop Mr Lewis representing any other phone hacking victims.

The newspaper reportedly hired a senior barrister to assess whether it would be possible to injunct Mr Lewis on the grounds that he was privy to confidential information because of his work with Mr Taylor.

The law firm Farrer and Co wrote to Mr Lewis threatening an injunction if he took on other phone hacking clients, but did nothing when he ignored the letter.

Mr Lewis said: “To follow my teenage daughter, my youngest daughter and video her is nothing short of sick. On another level, looking at me, that’s not how you litigate, you play the ball you don’t play the man…this is Mafia-like.”

Mr Lewis is said to be considering suing the company for breach of privacy.

Miss Harris declined to comment, but Max Clifford, the publicity agent who was represented by Miss Harris when he successfully sued the News of the World for £1m, said: “I know that she will be horrified at the thought that she was spied on and followed.

“She is a young mum and it’s horrendous that this happened.

“She became a thorn in the side of News International right from the start and they were desperate to silence her as she and Mark Lewis got closer and closer to the truth about the extent of phone hacking.”

A spokesman for News International said: “News International’s enquiries have led the company to believe that Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris were subject to surveillance.

“While surveillance is not illegal, it was clearly deeply inappropriate in these circumstances. This action was not condoned by any current executive at the company."

Koch brothers: secretive billionaires to launch vast database with 2012 in mind

David and Charles Koch, oil tycoons with strong right-wing views and connections, look set to tighten their grip on US politics

By Ed Pilkington in New York

guardian.co.uk,

Monday 7 November 2011 10.36 EST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/07/koch-brothers-database-2012-election

The secretive oil billionaires the Koch brothers are close to launching a nationwide database connecting millions of Americans who share their anti-government and libertarian views, a move that will further enhance the tycoons' political influence and that could prove significant in next year's presidential election.

The database will give concrete form to the vast network of alliances that David and Charles Koch have cultivated over the past 20 years on the right of US politics. The brothers, whose personal wealth has been put at $25bn each, were a major force behind the creation of the tea party movement and enjoy close ties to leading conservative politicians, financiers, business people, media figures and US supreme court judges.

The voter file was set up by the Kochs 18 months ago with $2.5m of their seed money, and is being developed by a hand-picked team of the brothers' advisers. It has been given the name Themis, after the Greek goddess who imposes divine order on human affairs.

In classic Koch style, the project is being conducted in great secrecy. Karl Crow, a Washington-based lawyer and Koch adviser who is leading the development, did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did media representatives for Koch Industries, the brothers' global energy company based in Wichita, Kansas.

But a member of a Koch affiliate organisation who is a specialist in the political uses of new technology and who is familiar with Themis said the project was in the final preparatory stages. Asking not to be named, he said: "They are doing a lot of analysis and testing. Finally they're getting Themis off the ground."

The database will bring together information from a plethora of right-wing groups, tea party organisations and conservative-leaning thinktanks. Each one has valuable data on their membership including personal email addresses and phone numbers, as well as more general information useful to political campaign strategists such as occupation, income bracket and so on.

By pooling the information, the hope is to create a data resource that is far more potent than the sum of its parts. Themis will in effect become an electoral roll of right-wing America, allowing the Koch brothers to further enhance their power base in a way that is sympathetic to, but wholly independent of, the Republican party.

"This will take time to fully realise, but it has the potential to become a very powerful tool in 2012 and beyond," said the new technology specialist.

Themis has been modelled in part on the scheme created by the left after the defeat of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Catalyst, a voter list that shared data on supporters of progressive groups and campaigns, was an important part of the process that saw the Democratic party pick itself off the floor and refocus its electoral energies, helping to propel Barack Obama to the White House in 2008.

Josh Hendler, who until earlier this year was the Democratic National Committee's director of technology in charge of the party's voter files, believes Themis could do for the Kochs what Catalyst helped do for the Democrats.

"This increases the Koch brothers' reach. It will allow them to become even greater co-ordinators than they are already with this resource they become a natural centre of gravity for conservatives," Hendler said.

Though Charles, 75, and his younger brother David, 71, are very rarely seen or heard in public, their political importance in the US is hard to exaggerate. They have been steadily investing their wealth in projects designed to drive the country ever more to the right they have backed the tea parties, funded incubators of radical conservative ideology such as the Mercatus Center at the George Mason University and hosted twice-yearly gatherings of some of the richest and most powerful figures in the country.

"What makes them unique is that they are not just campaign contributors; they are a vast political network in their own right," said Mary Boyle of the watchdog group, Common Cause.

They are estimated so far to have given more than $100m to right-wing causes. Kert Davies of Greenpeace estimates that the sum includes $55m since 1997 funding climate change deniers.

Many of the causes backed by the brothers clearly chime with their own self-interests. To encourage the denial of global warming science is obviously advantageous to businessmen who have made their fortunes in drilling and piping of oil; low taxation suits billionaires wanting to cut their own tax contributions; a bonfire of state regulations over business and the environment would be beneficial to a multinational corporation like Koch Industries, which is the second largest private company in the US.

But the two men are also anti-government ideologues who believe in what they preach, an inheritance from their fiercely anti-communist father Fred, who was a founder of the radical right-wing John Birch Society. David Koch stood as vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian party in 1980 on a platform of doing away with a host of public bodies including the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, the CIA, social security, welfare, taxation and public schools.

Though the Kochs have already stamped their influence on the American right, their impact to date looks like small beer compared with their ambitious plans for 2012. According to Kenneth Vogel of Politico, the brothers intend to use their leverage among billionaire conservatives to pump more than $200m into the proceedings, focusing in particular on the presidential race.

Their potential to sway the electorate through the sheer scale of their spending has been greatly enhanced by Citizens United, last year's controversial ruling by the US supreme court that opened the floodgates to corporate donations in political campaigns. The ruling allows companies to throw unlimited sums to back their chosen candidates, without having to disclose their spending.

That makes 2012 the first Citizens United presidential election, and in turn offers rich pickings to the Koch brothers. They have already made clear their intentions. At their most recent billionaires' gathering in Vail, Colorado in June, Charles Koch described next year's presidential contest as "the mother of all wars". A tape of his private speech obtained by Mother Jones said the fight for the White House would be a battle "for the life or death of this country".

Exhorting the 300 guests in attendance to open their sizeable wallets and donate to the Koch election coffers, he went on: "It isn't just your money we need. We need you bringing in new partners, new people. We can't do it alone. We have to multiply ourselves."

Which is where Themis comes in. Karl Crow, the spearhead of the new database, was one of the speakers at the June 2010 Koch gathering in Aspen, Colorado, where he described his mission under the heading "Mobilising Citizens".

"Is there a chance to elect leaders who are more strongly committed to liberty and prosperity," he said, adding that he wanted to put forward a "strategic plan to educate voters on the importance of economic freedom".

At the same gathering, the kernel of the idea for Themis was unveiled as a "micro-targeting" initiative that would allow a more thorough understanding of the electorate. "How can we take advantage of this advanced technology?" the agenda asked.

By dint of the secrecy surrounding the project, it is not known which bodies have signed up for the database. But it is a reasonable guess that groups that are highly influential within the tea party movement such as Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks, as well as right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, will be among the participants. Between them, they have tentacles that extend to millions of voters.

Lee Fang, a blogger at the Center for American Progress, thinks the combination of the Kochs' capital and their new voter files could have an immense impact in 2012. "This will be the first major election where most of the data and the organising will be done outside the party nexus. The Kochs have the potential to outspend and out-perform the Republican party and even the successful Republican candidate

News of the World hired investigators to spy on hacking victims' lawyers

Exclusive: Investigators followed and filmed lawyers of hacking victims in apparent bid to gather material on their private lives

By Nick Davies

guardian.co.uk,

Monday 7 November 2011 10.41 EST

The News of the World hired a specialist private investigator to run covert surveillance on two of the lawyers representing phone-hacking victims as part of an operation to put pressure on them to stop their work.

The investigator secretly videoed Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris as well as family members and associates. Evidence suggests this was part of an attempt to gather evidence for false smears about their private lives.

The News of the World also took specialist advice in an attempt to injunct Lewis to prevent him representing the victims of hacking and attempted to persuade one of his former clients to sue him.

The surveillance of Lewis and Harris occurred during the past 18 months, when Rupert Murdoch's son James was executive chairman of the paper's parent company, News International.

He is due to give a second round of evidence to a House of Commons select committee on Thursday and is likely to face intense questioning about the quality of his leadership.

Neither lawyer would comment but friends say they are furious at what they see as an attempt at "blackmail" and are considering suing the News of the World for breach of privacy. They have previously had to reassure clients that their private lives would not be exposed if they dared to sue the paper.

Lewis and Harris have been part of a small group of lawyers who have mounted a series of devastating legal actions against News International. Separately, they represented Gordon Taylor and Max Clifford, the first two hacking victims to sue the company for hacking their phones.

Harris also acts for football agent Sky Andrew, whose case led in January to the resignation of the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson. Lewis also represents the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose case led to the closure of the News of the World in July.

Emerging evidence suggests they were targeted on at least two occasions by Derek Webb, an investigator who specialises in physically following people and in making secret videos of their movements. Webb has worked for the News of the World since 2003, following hundreds of targets including members of the royal family and serving cabinet ministers.

Emails that have been recovered by Scotland Yard disclose the names of those working for News International who hatched the plans.

Webb was tasked as part of an attempt to prove a false claim that Harris was having an affair with a Manchester solicitor and other false claims about the private life of Charlotte Harris and her children. It is not yet clear exactly how the News of the World would have used the information if any claim had proved to be true.

In the spring of 2010, following a hostile report by the Commons media select committee, the News of the World hired Webb to gather evidence on Lewis. For reasons which are not yet clear, he focused on Lewis's former wife and secretly filmed her home in Manchester, following her and making further video of and her daughter as they visited local shops and a garden centre.

In January 2011, Webb was hired to spy on Harris. This was at a time when the case of her client Sky Andrew had uncovered information which led to the sacking of the paper's news editor, Ian Edmondson.

Webb was tasked to find evidence that she was having an affair with a Manchester solicitor. The allegation was false; Harris had never met the solicitor in question.

Other investigators also were hired to supply reports on the two lawyers, although it is not clear who commissioned them. One of the reports which has been seen by the Guardian, clearly suggests that somebody had been following Harris and her two young children.

In evidence to the media select committee in September, the News of the World's in-house lawyer, Tom Crone, was asked by the Labour MP Tom Watson if he had seen dossiers on the private lives of claimant lawyers. Crone said: "I saw one thing in relation to two of the lawyers, except I do not know whether it was a dossier. It involves their private lives."

He suggested that he could not name those who had commissioned this work without interfering with current police inquiries. Separately, according to internal emails recovered by Scotland Yard, the News of the World commissioned a senior barrister to advise on whether they could injunct Lewis to stop him working for any alleged victim of phone hacking on the grounds that he had confidential information from his work for Gordon Taylor.

The newspaper's solicitors, Farrer and Co, wrote to Lewis threatening to injunct him if he took on any hacking clients but took no action when Lewis ignored the threat.

The internal emails also reveal that the newspaper's lawyers tried to approach solicitors acting for Lewis's former client Gordon Taylor to see if they could persuade him to sue Lewis. This also failed, and Lewis has gone on to represent several dozen clients who are suing the News of the World for their alleged role in hacking their phones.

Webb is now also in dispute with the newspaper and has sought the help of the National Union of Journalists to pursue a claim that the News of the World failed to honour an agreement to give him a loyalty payment after the paper closed in July.

Webb is known to have followed members of the royal family, often on instructions from the former royal correspondent Clive Goodman, who was jailed in January 2007 for intercepting the voicemail of three members of the royal household.

Webb, who is a former police officer, also followed cabinet ministers, including John Prescott when he was deputy prime minister and Charles Clarke, the former home secretary.

The newspaper continued to hire him even after the phone-hacking scandal broke and he is known to have been following a leading trade unionist shortly before the paper closed.

In November 2008, Webb was cleared of aiding and abetting misconduct in public office in a controversial case in which Thames Valley police arrested a local newspaper journalist, Sally Murrer, and tried to have her prosecuted for receiving information from a police officer.

Physical surveillance is not normally seen as a criminal offence but it is possible that Webb's targets might sue for breach of privacy.

NASA video on YU55

Posted by Hoagland on September 7, 2011:

Actually, during Elenin's Closest Approach to the sun, September 10/11, NOTHING will be happening with Elenin ....

The real dates to watch are September 23 (when Elenin enters the field of view of the main SOHO camera), and the 26th -- when Elenin comes into DIRECT conjunction with the sun!

After that, September 29th will be the next key date to watch (when Elenin might deliberately FRAGMENT ... into a multiple of smaller "ships"), followed by October 16th -- when (at 19:50 GMT) Elenin will pass closest to the Earth (on its present course ...).

IF Elenin "does" anything on Sunday, September 11, it will ONLY be visible on the STEREO-A and B cameras anyway (I'm uncertain if it will still be visible from the ground, from Australia ...).

So, the 10th-year 911 Anniversary on Sunday is NOT a real distraction--

Unless ....

Something "bad" happens.

Posted by Hoagland on September 8, 2011:

Elenin is NOT a "huge object."

(The "shield is not an "object.")

The "fear porn" around it is ONLY aimed at those of us who even KNOW that Elenin exists ... at the moment.

But--

When Elenin "makes it" to CNN (and it WILL ... soon) -- all this "fear porn" will be patiently waiting ... on the INTERNET!

What do you think you'll find, even now, if you just go -- knowing NOTHING about Elenin -- and Google "Elenin" now ....

ALL THIS CAREFULLY-PLANTED FEAR PORN!!

Including--

Its "earthquake connection" ... to "alignments!"

You obviously have NEVER run a world-wide "fear porn campaign" ....

Worth remembering these misses. It is certainly going to be a great event, but I would treat anything that Mr Hoagland says with a very large grain of salt.

I posted earlier this statement by one of Richard Hoagland "Friends" on Facebook:

High Lander, a "Friend" of Richard C. Hoagland on Hoagland's Facebook page, wrote today (October 30, 2011)on Facebook:

"If this Asteroid does not do what Richard Hoagland said Then I suggest it will be the end of him because MANY people would be in doubt about anything he says afterwards..!!"

The question James Murdoch can't answer: will his father's empire survive?

Unless James Murdoch proves particularly impressive in his Commons grilling on Thursday, his family may cease to be a force in British life

By Henry Porter

The Observer,

Saturday 5 November 2011

It is difficult not to feel something for James Murdoch, as he prepares to answer questions for a second time at the House of Commons media committee. This is a man – not a bad man by any means – who is faced with maintaining a plea of ignorance when everyone knows that as the man responsible for running News International, not only should he have known about the extent of phone-hacking at the News of the World, he almost certainly did know.

It stretches credulity to suggest he was not briefed with the facts about the toxic waste lying in the basement after he succeeded Les Hinton in 2007. Indeed, new evidence – emails, a note and a legal opinion prepared for the News of the World, released by the committee – seems to point to a much more detailed knowledge of the scandal than he is admitting to.

The new facts are these. On 27 May 2008, the News of the World editor, Colin Myler, had a telephone conversation with a lawyer named Julian Pike at Farrer & Co, the solicitor representing the News of the World, about the possibility of settling with Gordon Taylor, the head of the Professional Footballers' Association, whose phone had been hacked. Pike made a note as they spoke and wrote down that Myler "spoke to James Murdoch". A few days later (3 June), News International received an opinion from its counsel, Michael Silverleaf QC, which warned of "overwhelming evidence of involvement of a number of senior journalists".

Leave this new material aside and just for a moment consider the nature of tabloid newspaper executives. This is not a class of people given to glorious self-sacrifice. The elementary requirement of the job is to pass blame down the line and responsibility up to senior management. Men such as Tom Crone, the legal manager at the News of the World and recipient of the damning opinion from Silverleaf, and Colin Myler had absolutely no reason to keep this information to themselves. Indeed, emails between Myler, Crone and Pike suggest that Myler talked in detail to Murdoch about the real extent of the problem, as Myler has testified.

So I may eat my hat and several goldfish if Murdoch manages to convince the world that he was not completely aware of and condoned the cover-up of the scandal, which, incidentally, is now believed by the police to have involved 5,795 separate individuals, somewhat revised from their original estimate of "a handful".

At this moment, Murdoch is no doubt seeking to navigate his way through these new obstacles and produce a performance that is consistent with the evidence he gave alongside his father in the summer. It's going to be an ordeal because it seems entirely possible that he is holding two contrary thoughts in his head: a strategy of denial, inherited from the previous administration and tacitly blessed by his father, and the truth, which is that all the key senior figures at News International knew exactly what lay in the basement.

He has been landed in this mess by his father, who denied knowledge of the scandal and shamefully blamed his subordinates, but also by his father's clannish need for a successor with his genes at News Corp. What must make it all the more painful for Murdoch is that an article by Sarah Ellison in Vanity Fair, for which I also work, suggests that Rupert contemplated a proposal from James's sister, Elisabeth, that he should resign after the closure of the News of the World.

Life in the Murdoch family is like high-altitude Tennessee Williams, but the drama is not playing well with investors of News Corp in the US, especially the revelation that James and Elisabeth, plus Murdoch's other two adult children, Lachlan and Prudence, took part in a family therapy session to decide who would succeed their father as head of News Corp. Normally, this is left to a board of directors, not the offspring of a minority stake. The more immediate issue, if Murdoch does not succeed in convincing the committee, is his position as chairman of BSkyB, the broadcasting company that News International failed to buy out in the summer after the hacking scandal broke.

In July, the independent directors supported Murdoch but this will change if he is discredited during questioning by committee stars such as Tom Watson, Paul Farrelly and Louise Mensch, because he could not, in those circumstances, continue to meet the standards of a "fit and proper person" required of a broadcasting licence holder by Ofcom. It became clear how much rides on his appearance when culture secretary Jeremy Hunt refused to back him in the Commons after being pressed by Labour MP Chris Bryant.

So, Murdoch allies on the board may have an awkward choice between his interests and those of other shareholders. Three weeks after the hearing, Murdoch must make another appearance in front of the AGM of BSkyB shareholders. Like the recent AGM of News Corp in Los Angeles, this may be a rough ride, and let's not forget the pall that hangs over NI on account of two ongoing police investigations, the Leveson inquiry and 16 arrests of past and present employees, the most recent being of a Sun reporter in connection with payments to police officers.

These are incredible pressures for a relatively untested 38-year-old man who must comply with a disastrous strategy that was not originally of his devising and who has not received all the support he should from his family. As Ellison points out, the conflict between feelings of protectiveness for his 80-year-old father and impulses of resentment must be extremely hard, which is why he has my sympathy.

The phone-hacking scandal is a story of folly and arrogance, as well as corruption. We may well be watching the slow-motion disintegration of one of the greatest business empires and most formidable political influences ever known in the democratic world. There is a long way to go, but the thing to remember, especially by those commentators who continue to maintain that phone-hacking is an essentially frivolous issue, is that the scandal at News International may also involve extensive police corruption.

When I spoke a couple of months ago to a US senator about the possibility of large-scale payments to the London police, it took a couple of beats before the senator's eyes narrowed and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was mentioned. It is this issue that may prove to be far the most serious aspect of the scandal for News Corp in a country where the penalties for bribing officials in another country are steep

James Murdoch: Will the crown remain beyond his grasp?

A relative newcomer to the title of News Corp successor, his performance at this week's select committee hearing on phone hacking will shape not only his own destiny, but that of the dynasty founded by his father, Rupert.

By James Robinson

The Observer,

Saturday 5 November 2011

When he was a teenager, James Murdoch and his older brother, Lachlan, used to hang from the rafters of their father's house in Aspen, Colorado, and challenge one another to pull-up competitions. One former Murdoch executive who attended a retreat at the holiday home recalls seeing red stains on the woodwork and being told by their mother Anna – Rupert Murdoch's second wife – that the boys were so pig-headed they would compete until their hands bled. "James usually won," he adds.

Two decades later, he also looked set to triumph over Lachlan in the race to become their father's successor at News Corp. But now his grip on that prize is starting to slip. When James Murdoch returns to Parliament to face questions from MPs investigating the phone-hacking affair, he will be fighting to repair his reputation and that of the company his father founded. He will also be shaping his destiny and determining the fortunes of a dynasty. Should he fail to convince, the chances of James succeeding Rupert at the helm of the world's most powerful media conglomerate will be remote. Succeed, on the other hand, and the hereditary principle may yet hold at News Corp.

It is no exaggeration to say that the future of the company is in the hands of the 38-year-old London-born executive, once regarded as the most rebellious and unconventional of his father's four adult children. The teenager who once sported an eyebrow piercing and ran a hip-hop label called Rawkus Records is now deputy chief operating officer at News Corp, where only Rupert and his number two, Chase Carey, outrank him.

James has been groomed to take charge of News Corp, the owner of the Sun, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, since Lachlan resigned as deputy chief operating officer six years ago. James had already served a youthful apprenticeship at News Corp's internet arm by then, followed by a rapid rise through the executive ranks at the company's television businesses.

By the time he appeared before MPs alongside his father in July, when public revulsion over the News of the World's targeting of a mobile phone which belonged to murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler was at its height, Rupert's sharply suited son had also run News Corp's UK newspapers, Murdoch's power base for decades.

Yet the activities of the News of the World, a paper which generated less than 1% of the group's profits, has shaken the foundations of the Wall Street-listed company so hard it is in danger of crumbling.

When he was questioned by the culture, media and sport committee, which has been investigating phone-hacking for four years, his meandering responses were peppered with management-speak. His father, sitting beside him, grunted his answers. This time, he will face MPs alone. It promises to be a far tougher ordeal.

Immediately after the Murdochs gave evidence in July, two former News of the World executives, the paper's former editor, Colin Myler, and ex-head of legal affairs, Tom Crone, issued a dramatic statement contradicting the evidence of their former boss. Both men insisted they had told Murdoch three years before about the existence of a company email from 2005 which showed beyond doubt that phone-hacking had not been the work of a single "rogue reporter". Myler and Crone allege that is why Murdoch agreed to pay more than £700,000 – to settle the case – to Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor, who was suing the paper after discovering it had intercepted voicemails left on his mobile phone.

Murdoch denies he was told about the full content of what became known as the "for Neville" email, after the paper's chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck. He told MPs that Myler and Crone informed him in June 2008 about the existence of the email and they made it clear that it proved Taylor's phone had been hacked by the News of the World. Crucially, Murdoch denied the two men had also told him that the email showed hacking was not just the work of one reporter, as they insist they did.

The decision to settle, Murdoch said, was based on legal advice which said Taylor would settle. Last week, that legal advice was published by the committee. In it, the company's QC, Michael Silverleaf, warned the "for Neville" email constituted "overwhelming evidence" there was "a culture" of hacking at the paper. MPs are likely to press Murdoch about how much he knew about that advice, because it blew apart the company's claim that hacking was the work of a single reporter. That is crucial, because News International subsequently issued a series of denials sanctioned by its most senior executives, including one in July 2009 which accused the Guardian, the Observer's sister paper, of choosing to "mislead the British public" when it claimed News of the World journalists were engaged in systematic phone-hacking.

Murdoch's judgment and his integrity are at stake. Sources close to the company insist he stands by his version of events. Put simply, it is Murdoch's word against Myler and Crone's. The stage is set for a dramatic confrontation.

If Murdoch is nervous about the encounter, he was hiding it well last week. On Wednesday, he and his glamorous American wife, Kathryn Hufschmid, who works for the Clinton Climate Initiative, attended a party organised by BSkyB, 39.1% owned by News Corp and which Murdoch still chairs. Murdoch, dressed in jeans and a sharply tailored jacket, seemed relaxed and amiable. The message, intentional or otherwise, was that it is business as usual at News Corp. In reality, however, the phone-hacking scandal means it is anything but. Last month, around two-thirds of News Corp's independent shareholders voted against the re-election of James Murdoch to the board of the company. The Murdoch family controls nearly 40% of News Corp voting shares, enough to ensure Murdoch was re-elected regardless, but that vote cannot be ignored. It is an indictment of Murdoch's handling of the phone-hacking affair and the clearest signal yet that News Corp's investors do not want him to succeed his father.

This has thrown the family firm (it may be publicly quoted in New York, but it's run as if it were a private concern) into crisis. It has also disturbed the delicate equilibrium that exists between the younger members of the family, three of whom have held, or still do hold, senior positions at News Corp.

Lachlan, Murdoch's oldest son, remains on the board and the company recently bought Shine, the production company owned by Elisabeth, the eldest of Rupert's three children from his second marriage. Both had been viewed as the most likely to succeed Rupert in the past – James only emerged in recent years as his father's heir apparent. The family – Murdoch also has two young children with his wife Wendi, and an older daughter, Prudence, from his first marriage – had accepted James as primus inter pares.

But according to an article published in Vanity Fair, Elisabeth blames James for the company's disastrous response to phone-hacking. She reportedly urged her father to send James on a leave of absence, an idea he seems to have considered, if only fleetingly. The disagreements are serious, but as yet there is no rift. The family has sought help from a psychologist, however, in an attempt to ensure the succession issue does not result in schism.

James is regarded as a chip off the old block in the media industry. He poured scorn on the BBC in an industry lecture two years ago, and shouted at the former editor of the Independent during a visit to the paper's offices. When the hacking scandal was at its height, it was James who argued the News of the World should be closed while his father prevaricated. At Sky, he demonstrated his mettle by authorising an audacious dawn raid on ITV, snapping up a stake of the rival broadcaster in a successful attempt to prevent it being sold to Sky's main competitor, Virgin Media.

James was highly regarded at Sky. But at the end of the month, he could face another embarrassing vote at Sky's annual general meeting, where investors will vote on whether he should remain chairman.

If Parliament finds his answers this week unsatisfactory, he may even be deposed by shareholders at Sky – which News Corp would have owned outright by now if the hacking scandal hadn't derailed its multibillion pound bid for the remainder of the company it did not already own.

The key question now, for the Murdoch family and beyond is: has James been so tarnished by the hacking affair that he will never land the top job at News Corp itself? By the end of the week, the answer should be somewhat clearer.

THE MURDOCH FILE

Born In London 13 December 1972, the third child of Rupert and Anna Murdoch. Raised in the US. He won a place at Harvard but dropped out. Married American Kathryn Hufschmid in 2000.

Best of times When he was made heir apparent to his father in 2007, becoming chairman and chief executive officer of Europe and Asia at News Corporation.

Worst of times Ongoing. He has been under intense scrutiny following the phone-hacking affair, and will this week return to Parliament to face MPs investigating phone-hacking.

What he says "In this all-media marketplace, the expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy." On the BBC at Edinburgh television festival 2009.

What others say "There is an intensity to him. The guy's got intensity wrapped around energy."

Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster who once worked for him.

"I think he bears a great deal of responsibility. There's an expectation people have of you if you are a Murdoch that has made him quite mature."

Charles Dunstone, chairman, Carphone Warehouse.

James Murdoch prepares to face MPs over phone hacking

News Corp boss is preparing to concede that company should have taken further action over allegations earlier

By Dan Sabbagh

guardian.co.uk,

Sunday 6 November 2011 13.48 EST

James Murdoch is preparing to concede in front of MPs that News Corporation should have taken further action earlier to investigate allegations that phone hacking was more widespread at the News of the World than the actions of a single rogue reporter.

The News Corporation boss is to appear before the culture media and sport select committee on Thursday ready to admit that more could have been done between 2007 and 2010 when first insiders and later rival newspapers said the illegal practice was widely deployed.

Fighting to save his career, Murdoch is aware he has to appear informed about how News Corp dealt with the hacking allegations – and he has to be prepared to admit that mistakes were made, including by himself.

However, with advisers such as News Corp's acting chief lawyer Janet Nova flying in, it is not clear how far the company's legal team will allow James Murdoch to make the limited concessions planned. Friends of Murdoch say he is "surrounded" by people giving him advice, making it hard to proceed.

The News Corp boss also plans to sidestep any questions about the size of the severance payment made to former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks. It was reported at the weekend that the figure received was £1.7m, although it is understood the payment was in fact larger than this.

Acutely aware of what is becoming a sensitive issue at the company, Murdoch is expected to say any payments made to Brooks cannot be discussed due to contractual confidentiality. News Corporation has no legal obligation to disclose the size of the severance because Brooks was not a director of the US-listed company.

Murdoch was in charge of the News of the World and the company's other British newspapers as part of his job as executive chairman at UK subsidiary News International. He took over from Les Hinton at the end of 2007, nearly a year after News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed for his involvement in hacking into phone messages left for Prince William and Prince Harry's staff.

Before Murdoch arrived Hinton agreed to pay Goodman a severance of £240,000, after Goodman launched an unfair dismissal claim. News International has said it found no evidence at the time that hacking went on more widely.

A year later, Murdoch agreed to pay football boss Gordon Taylor £425,000 plus £200,000 to settle a phone hacking lawsuit. Controversy surrounds the payout – with former News of the World editor Colin Myler and chief lawyer Tom Crone saying Murdoch was told of an email that made it clear hacking went beyond Goodman. Murdoch has told the committee he had no knowledge of the email.He has also said he was not shown a separate report prepared for Tom Crone by QC Michael Silverleaf – which said that there appeared to be a "culture of illegal information access" at the News of the World. It is understood that he will offer new additional information about what he knew at the time.

Murdoch gave loyal lieutenant Rebekah Brooks £1.7m pay-off, car and office

News International chairman may face questions in Commons over generous severance deal despite phone-hacking scandal

By Daniel Boffey, policy editor

guardian.co.uk,

Saturday 5 November 2011 17.00 EDT

Rebekah Brooks, the former News of the World editor who resigned as chief executive of News International at the height of the phone-hacking scandal, received £1.7m in cash, the use of a London office and a chauffeur-driven limousine as part of her severance package from the newspaper group.

Brooks, a favourite of Rupert Murdoch who rose from being a secretary on the features desk of the Sunday newspaper to the very top of the mogul's UK operation, quit in July amid claims over the alleged illegal activities carried out by her executives and reporters. Days after she resigned, she was arrested and bailed in connection with allegations of phone hacking and corruption.

Records at Companies House show that she has resigned from 23 directorships related to the firm. However, the Observer has learned that, along with a generous payoff and continued use of her company limousine and driver for two years, Brooks, 43, has been given an office for the same period of time in an affluent central London area which her spokesman asked the Observer not to reveal for security reasons.

The decision to give Brooks an office will inevitably be raised on Thursday when James Murdoch, the 38-year-old son of Rupert and chairman of News International, returns to Westminster to answer questions from the Commons culture, media and sport select committee about his knowledge of illegal activities by his employees.

Tom Watson, the Labour MP who helped lead the fight to expose the phone-hacking practices carried out by News of the World journalists, queried the company's decision. He said: "It is remarkably curious that such an generous package is given to Ms Brooks when others have been cut loose. It is almost as if she hasn't really left the company. I am sure Mr Murdoch will want to explain the decision to his shareholders."

James Murdoch is set to make his second appearance before the Commons committee this week after discrepancies arose between his previous testimony and that of his key lieutenants.

During the session he is also likely to be questioned about previous claims that illegal practices did not take place at the Sun newspaper, where Brooks was editor between 2003 and 2009 before being elevated to the role of chief executive of News International.

The investigation into police corruption and newspapers' illegal payments to officers was extended to the Sun last week, as detectives arrested one of its reporters at his home near Windsor.

Jamie Pyatt, 49, the first journalist from the title to be arrested by Scotland Yard's Operation Elveden into payments to police officers, has been at the Sun since 1987 and worked under Brooks when she was editor there.

Dave Wilson, the chairman of Bell Pottinger, the public relations group hired by Brooks to deal with the fallout from her resignation, declined to comment on the "confidential" details of her severance package.

News International also declined to comment.

In this radio interview conducted Nov. 4, 2011, which gets off to a shaky start but is worth listening to, Richard Hoagland stands by his proposed scenario that asteroid YU55 may hit the moon next Tuesday but will definitely not hit the Earth.

He also maintains that FEMA'S shutdown for 3 1/2 minutes of all U.S. radio and television broadcasting that is scheduled for the next day is designed to allow President Obama to give assurance and to calm public fears if there is a YU55 collision on the moon.

Also:

http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/284400/3/National-Emergency-Alert-System-test-next-Wednesday?fb_ref=artsharetop&fb_source=home_multiline