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Bombshell Tapes May Reveal New Marilyn Monroe Mystery
Apr 26, 2011 – 8:38 AM
www.aolnews.com
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/26/bombshell-tapes-reveal-new-marilyn-monroe-mystery/
By Chris Epting Contributor
Did Marilyn Monroe take a mystery trip aboard Frank Sinatra's private jet the very weekend she died? A trip during which she spent an intense night at the singer's retreat with mobster Sam Giancana?
That's one of the suggestions made on the recently disclosed tapes featuring a close confidante of Monroe's -- who was also one of the most famous stylists in history.
The legendary screen star's passing on Aug. 5, 1962, remains, arguably, the most mysterious and controversial death in Hollywood history.
[undated file photo of American actress Marilyn Monroe shortly before her death on Aug. 5, 1962.]
While the "official" version of her untimely death was "probable" suicide, many researchers, journalists, historians, criminologists and avowed conspiracy theorists have speculated over the years and reached different conclusions.
These range from accidental overdose to premeditated murder to almost everything in between, co-mingled with a cast of stars and supporting players including John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Peter Lawford, Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra, along with a host of mobsters and other assorted hangers-on.
We may never know if RFK and Lawford visited Monroe the night she died or whether she died en route to the hospital and then allegedly was secretly transported back to her home.
And just when it seemed all the facts were in about how Monroe spent her much-analyzed last 24 hours, along comes a voice from the grave -- with a shocking revelation.
For me, this story started several weeks ago, after I received a note from Jeff Platts, a 60-year-old sales consultant from Southern California.
He'd seen a copy of a book I wrote, "Marilyn Monroe Dyed Here: More Locations of America's Pop Culture Landmarks." Her name in the title brought back a special family memory and compelled him to reach out.
His note read in part, "My uncle's name was George Masters and he was Marilyn Monroe's personal hair stylist and makeup artist for a number of years leading up to her death. He traveled with her extensively. I have some audio cassette recordings of phone conversations he and I had shortly before his death in 1998. I haven't listened to the tapes since they were recorded so I don't remember exactly what's on them, but I thought you might be interested in checking them out."
Then the kicker:
"One of the stories he told me was very interesting. George picked Marilyn up at her house and they flew together on Frank Sinatra's private plane to Lake Tahoe. Marilyn spent the evening in the casino with Sam Giancana, the gangster. Early the next morning they flew back to LAX and George drove her home, dropping her off about 9 a.m. It was that night that Marilyn died."
What? It has been well documented that the weekend before she died, Monroe visited the Cal-Neva Lodge -- the infamous resort where Sinatra, Giancana and their cronies occasionally squirreled away -- then returned to her Brentwood home, where she was discovered Sunday morning.
But had she also secretly returned to the infamous lair the day before she died?
Could this have actually slipped through the cracks in the glitter dome all this time?
It is here where our story truly begins.
If the name George Masters sounds familiar, it's with good reason.
For more than two decades beginning in the 1950s, the Detroit native was the most successful hair and makeup man in Hollywood.
His client list was a "who's who" of modern cultural history, including Lucille Ball, Elizabeth Taylor, Nancy Reagan, Doris Day, Ann-Margret and dozens more.
That list included Monroe, for nearly every day of the last two years of her life. Masters created her last signature look and styled her hundreds of times, including her famous final photo sessions.
Dashing, flamboyant and an influential star in his own right, Masters commanded the highest fees in the world, regularly jet-setting around the globe for his clients. (Many of his tales and tips were documented in his 1977 book "The Masters Way to Beauty.")
In 1966, he famously gave Lynda Bird Johnson, LBJ's daughter, a makeover for her appearance at the Oscars. Later in his career in what he called his most challenging project, he created Dustin Hoffman's "Tootsie" look in 1982 for director Sidney Pollack.
But no matter how high he flew over Tinseltown, in the end, like many others, he crashed. And he crashed hard.
Masters died in 1998 at age 62, destitute and broken -- a drug-addled victim of the star chamber he'd helped create.
About a month before he passed away, he sat down and recorded some discussions with Platts. Recently, Platts shared a portion of the tapes with me, specifically one that dealt with Monroe's last night.
In a frail but controlled voice, here's what Masters remembered about the last night he saw Monroe alive.
"The night before she died, the last time I saw her, was in Lake Tahoe at the Cal-Neva Lodge. She was there with Sam Giancana, who was the head of the Mafia."
I have never, in all my years of research, seen anything that pointed to this trip. I asked Platts, based on his time spent with Masters, how he interpreted this revelation.
"I think it may be important, although George didn't elevate it any higher than any of his other Marilyn stories," Platts said.
"But here's why I think it could be important -- but it's just speculation. If the reports are true that the reason Marilyn had been invited to the Cal-Neva Lodge (one week earlier) so that Frank Sinatra and others could try to keep her from spilling all the Kennedy beans, and that they had failed, then what if this trip George talks about was a last-ditch effort to get her to agree not to talk? What if Sam Giancana said, 'Look, Frank, you didn't get it done. She'll listen to me. Let's bring her back again so I can have a shot at it.'"
Platts continued.
"George specifically told me that Marilyn spent the evening with Sam Giancana. The only other person he mentioned that was there was Buddy Greco. No Frank Sinatra, no Dean Martin. George also said that the person she was really in love with at that moment was Sam Giancana.
"Also, if this trip did happen, it was certainly kept hush-hush. Pat Newcomb (Monroe's publicist) said she slept over at Marilyn's house that night, but doesn't address whether or not Marilyn was there -- only that Marilyn woke up about noon. The housekeeper says she arrived 'early,' but again no mention of Marilyn being there or not being there."
Interestingly, Newcomb went to work for the Kennedys after Monroe's death. Also, on the tapes, Masters said, "Talk to Pat -- she knows everything."
Here's how Platts said Masters laid out his last day with Monroe.
• Friday, Aug. 3. Masters and Monroe flew to Lake Tahoe on Sinatra's plane (no mention of any other passengers).
• Monroe spent the evening, well past midnight, with Giancana.
• He mentioned that Greco was there. I'm not sure if he meant that Greco was the entertainer in the lounge or if he was just there.
• Very early in the morning, Masters and Monroe flew back to LAX on Sinatra's plane (again, no mention of other passengers).
• They arrived at LAX early in the morning (7-8 a.m.).
• Masters drove her back to her house in Brentwood and dropped her off about 8-9 a.m. That was the last time he saw her.
If true, this is a bombshell sequence that adds more than just a wrinkle to the screen legend's last hours -- it completely rewrites the entire final act.
I asked if Masters could have confused the two trips. Platts told me his uncle clearly delineated between the trip he took to Cal-Neva with Monroe the week before she died, and the day before. Two separate trips.
After mentioning the last night, on the tapes Masters added cryptically, "Did you know she was pronounced dead, and then they brought her back to the house, and she was still alive, and they took her back to the hospital, and brought her back home, and then the coroners came over, and they found her dead in another bed -- somebody moved her."
In that one sentence, though there is no elaboration beyond that, Masters seemed to confirm a popular theory -- that Monroe was, in fact, rushed to the hospital alive, then -- in Keystone Kops fashion -- was doubled-back before being dumped home in what many found to be a very un-suicide-like resting position.
Masters continued.
"And you know how she died? It was an enema. With Nembutal."
"For the purpose of getting high with the drugs?" Platts asked his uncle.
"No," Masters answered. "It was because of the Kennedys. I really think the FBI did it."
Again, no elaboration; perhaps just the opinion of one who'd watched his client dance around the edge with some of the most powerful (and dangerous) men in the world. Still, the ease and nonchalance with which Masters shared his memories is compelling.
And, of course, the alternate theories -- that the government got involved in silencing Monroe to stop her from dishing secrets on her two Kennedy chums or, alternately, to set them up -- are not new.
Also sprinkled throughout the tapes are peeks into Monroe's bizarre backstage world; a shady parallel universe where powerful celebrities, gangsters and politicians drank, schemed, spied, gambled and had sex -- all on their own rough terms.
Masters described how, when traveling by limo to Sinatra's house, he was blindfolded so as not to know the address. There were endless private jet escapes with Monroe all over the country, prepping her hair and makeup, turning her into a star each time she got ready to keep company with the odd arrangement of men in her life.
Platts summed up the Monroe-Masters relationship as he heard it described by his uncle.
"George and Marilyn had a love-hate relationship. He described her as the coldest person he'd ever known. He said she'd never really loved anyone but herself. She would do whatever was necessary to keep all the attention focused on her. Her public image was a complete fabrication. George stayed with Marilyn because she was his biggest client (financially as well as level of celebrity).
"After the incident in Mexico, where a reporter asked Marilyn if George was her brother, she viewed him as a necessary evil. She hated the fact that he might have detracted attention from her, but he was the best in the business and she needed his skills."
On the tapes, Masters talked about the Mexico incident, saying that Monroe wanted him to dye his hair black so as not to be mistaken again for her brother -- she didn't like the attention the striking blonde man commanded.
The Masters tapes, if accurate, represent not just a view into the sordid last scenes of Hollywood's most iconic sex symbol. They may also provide evidence of a secret, last-minute trip that's never before been reported -- and that may hold even more clues surrounding the lurid circumstances of Monroe's death.
The only person alive who can confirm or deny much of this is Monroe's former press agent. Newcomb, Masters and Monroe were whirlwind traveling partners for much of those two years and, again, as Masters uttered just weeks before he died, "Talk to Pat -- she knows everything."
Newcomb, now in her 80s and elusive, has always been reticent when it comes to speaking about Monroe. Hopefully one day she'll address these dramatic revelations.
Like many of his clients, Masters was also a Hollywood icon, a celebrity hair and makeup man who made more personal appearances than most of the stars he worked for.
He rocketed to fame after starting as an apprentice at New York's Elizabeth Arden Salon, and commanded one of the highest salaries in the industry. (He even claimed to have been partial inspiration for the lead character in Warren Beatty's 1975 film "Shampoo," which featured a red-hot Hollywood hairdresser named "George.")
Masters lived, played and worked among a galaxy of stars, but none captivated the public more than Monroe.
Today, almost 50 years after her death, she teases, titillates and tantalizes; a haunting blonde specter whose last moments remain as riveting a Hollywood mystery as anything the industry has ever produced.
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Watergate's 'last chapter'
By: James Hohmann
Politico.com
April 19, 2011 06:20 AM EDT
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53395.html
YORBA LINDA, Calif.—When the museum at Richard Nixon’s library opened in 1990, the only American to resign the presidency was still alive, and his loyalists were still fighting the battles of the early 1970s.
The museum’s display on Watergate quoted a book accusing Bob Woodward of “offering bribes” to get scoops. The library director made his own views plain: “I don’t think we’d ever open the doors to Bob Woodward. He’s not a responsible journalist.”
On Monday evening, the library did indeed open its doors to Woodward and his old boss, former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee. They flew in to see a new Watergate exhibit—one that aims at last to tell the story dispassionately and portrays the journalists as truth-seekers.
In a remarkable scene that played out on what counts as sacred ground for the dwindling corps of original Nixon true-believers, a crowd of almost 1,000 welcomed Woodward and Bradlee with a standing ovation, then listened with rapt attention and regular laughter as the two men traded wisecracks and reminisced about their roles in bringing down the 37th president.
They spoke in a room designed as a replica of the White House East Room.
Bradlee, leaning on a cane and partly sanitizing his once-legendary profane tongue for the occasion, marveled at how many people still care about a decades-old conflict—one that turned Woodward, his reporting partner Carl Bernstein, and Bradlee into some of the most famous journalists of their era.
“How the hell long ago was it? Almost 40 years,” he said. “It is an interesting story, and it still is: a President of the United States getting his you-know-what in a crack like that and”—here he paused for a moment—“I mean Holy Moly!”
In 2007, the National Archives took control of the library and museum from a foundation privately run by Nixon loyalists. The director installed by the government, a charismatic historian from Canada with an Ivy League pedigree, had the Nixon-approved panels torn out and the videos removed. Tim Naftali then spent years designing an objective display on the break-in and cover-up.
It opened three weeks ago, an illustration of how implacably time marches on and history’s cooling perspective on even the most remorseless political battles.
Woodward is 68, seven years older than Nixon at the time of his resignation. Bradlee, who turns 90 in August, first met Nixon covering the 1960 presidential campaign more than half a century ago. His confrontations with the Nixon White House, on Watergate and the decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, established The Post as a top-tier newspaper. He’s lived long enough since retiring at age 70 in 1991 to see his old home struggling to maintain itself during an industry-wide crisis for metropolitan newspapers.
Meanwhile, a new generation of Nixon admirers believes that telling the Watergate story with more scholarly detachment will allow the rest of his record to be appraised more fairly.
Asked by an audience member if he thought Nixon was a good president, Bradlee made a so-so gesture with his hand. Reflecting on Nixon’s resignation, he said Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater was a “tremendously useful source” in The Post’s Watergate coverage.
“No one thought that Barry Goldwater would have a friend at The Washington Post, but he was my wife’s mother’s – should I say it? – boyfriend,” he confided to the huge crowd. “We saw a lot of Barry Goldwater.”
“Too much information, Ben,” Woodward cracked in return.
The Ben and Bob Show went on. Like stage performers, they repeated classic Watergate war stories that they’ve told countless times since the 1970s. They have the cadence, the dramatic pauses and the punch lines down pat. Razor-sharp for most of the evening, Bradlee occasionally showed his age, forgetting names or dates and asking Woodward to repeat several of the 18 questions from the audience.
Woodward gave the crowd his theory that he sees the term “Watergate” as shorthand for five different wars waged by Nixon. The first was the administration’s campaign against the anti-Vietnam war movement. The second was the war against the press and White House aides suspected of being disloyal. The third was efforts against those seen as abetting the anti-war movement and opposing the president’s reelection. The victims included Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist and the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The fourth war was the cover-up.
The fifth was a “war against history,” which Nixon pursued from the day he left office to the day he died. It includes his efforts to downplay the scandal’s significance and to rehabilitate his image by emphasizing foreign policy accomplishments.
“To a certain extent, the sixth war was fought here at the Nixon library where the question was how are you going to deal with Watergate,” he told the crowd.
He praised the new Watergate exhibit for connecting the dots and telling the full story. He and Bradlee gamely sat for interviews with reporters and TV affiliates before their talk to praise Naftali’s new exhibit.
“It might be the last chapter of Watergate,” he told POLITICO before the speech.
Bernstein spoke solo at the library in 2007 about his Hillary Clinton biography so the presence of a Watergate antagonist on Nixon territory wasn’t completely novel.
What made Monday’s visit so noteworthy was the lack of howling objections from Nixon loyalists.
In the crowd was John Taylor, the longtime director of the museum and a former chief of staff to Nixon during his ex-presidency.
“Mr. Woodward is the most famous journalist in the world, not an ideological figure by any means, and someone who is integrally, along with his editor Mr. Bradlee, part of the story of those times,” he said beforehand. “And eventually it would look strange if the library didn’t invite people like Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bradlee because, again, the visiting public understands that they’re part of the story.”
Taylor approached Woodward when the event ended.
Woodward told him that he didn’t want to sugar coat his message—that Nixon loyalists tried to manipulate history—just because he was speaking at the Nixon library.
Taylor, who stepped down in 2009 and now practices full-time as an Episcopal priest, indicated that he understood and joked with his wife about the two of them being “field marshals in the war against history.”
“History will work it out,” he said, expressing confidence that Nixon will be judged better with the passage of time.
It was a marked contrast to 2009. When Naftali invited former White House counsel John Dean to talk about his memoir “Blind Ambition,” the Nixon foundation protested by withdrawing $150,000 in money they had committed to cosponsor events with the National Archives. “He’s disgraced and has been disbarred,” the foundation’s assistant director at the time said.
This time, the Nixon Foundation released only a terse statement.
“We hope that Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bradlee enjoy their visit to the Nixon Library,” it said. “For another perspective on Watergate, we invite them to our website at nixonfoundation.org where they may see the original Watergate exhibit text with President Nixon’s hand written notations.”
To be sure, tensions remain. If there’s anything, it’s a détente.
Naftali said he’s “delighted” that the pushback wasn’t as strong as in 2009, but he said the foundation refused his offer to cosponsor Woodward and Bradlee’s appearance as a gesture of goodwill. [The men paid their own way, waiving their usual five-figure speaking fees.]
“We weren’t seeking controversy in either case; we were seeking to do the right thing,” said Naftali. “Look, I want healing… I’ve always felt that once the Watergate exhibit went in, it would lead to some tension but then over time the tension would dissipate. That was the biggest thing we had to do to establish our credibility as an institution.”
The foundation objected to the panel on Woodward and Bernstein in the new exhibit. Ron Walker, the chairman and president of the Nixon Foundation, wrote a 145-page memo last August outlining objections to the proposed text of Naftali’s exhibit.
“With the naming of Mark Felt as Deep Throat, some maintain the source of a number of Woodward’s block-buster revelations was not the result of true investigative reporting, but leaks from Felt of what was already under investigation by career Federal prosecutors,” Walker wrote. “It may also be appropriate to point out that much of what was written by Woodward and Bernstein turned out to be factually incorrect.”
Walker didn’t specify his qualms with Woodward’s and Bernstein’s reporting, and the National Archives ignored virtually all his objections.
In the final exhibit, Woodward’s voice can occasionally be heard bellowing from a loudspeaker above one of the touch screens. It’s a clip from an oral history interview he gave for the new exhibit, in which he recalls calling Howard Hunt about his name appearing in the papers of one of the Watergate burglars.
Nixon, of course, hated Woodward. During a recent interview in Washington, Woodward proudly read from the transcript of an Oval Office conversation on April 27, 1973. Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, told the president that Woodward was calling around the White House asking questions about the president’s involvement in Watergate.
“Tell him he better watch his goddamn ass,” Nixon snapped.
The quote that then-library director Hugh Hewitt gave to the Los Angeles Times in 1990 about Woodward not being welcome still rankles, even though Nixon quickly distanced himself from it in the wake of a public backlash.
“It was thoroughly and purely Nixonian,” Woodward said. “It’s not that we’re going to ban the books. We’re going to ban the person from going to the library.”
Asked about his old quote, Hewitt said: “I try not to revisit the scenes of my youthful exuberances.”
Now a conservative radio host, Hewitt wrote in an e-mail: “Please extend to Mr. Woodward on my behalf a sincere invitation to come to the studio and spend as much of a show as he’d like with me. It would be a fascinating interview.”
Every presidential library struggles to balance myth and fact. The repositories of documents are managed by the neutral National Archives while the public displays in the museum are typically maintained by the former president’s foundation.
David Greenberg, who has studied Nixon’s attempt to redefine his image, calls the arrangement a “strange, hybrid beast.”
Libraries consequently have varying degrees of problems dealing with families.
Taylor compared Woodward’s trip to Yorba Linda to Robert Caro’s 2003 appearance at Lyndon Johnson’s library in Austin. Caro had spent 26 years researching his biographies on LBJ, one of which won a Pulitzer Prize, but his books were kept out of the library gift shop and he wasn’t invited to speak at the facility until a new director with an academic background took over from a former Johnson speechwriter.
Ronald Reagan’s museum finally added a section this February about the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal. But it’s largely on Reagan’s terms, with an edited video of his 1987 Oval Office address explaining what went wrong and a display that stresses it happened “without the President’s knowledge.”
Bill Clinton personally involved himself in discussions with the National Archives about how his impeachment would be handled at his Little Rock museum. A section called “Fight for Power” portrays then-Speaker Newt Gingrich as pursuing a politically-motivated witch hunt.
The newly renovated exhibit shows more of Nixon’s warts than any other presidential library does of its subject. Then again, perhaps Nixon has more warts.
“With all due respect to Bob and Bradlee, this is kind of the cherry on top of the icing on the cake,” said Greenberg, who helped Woodward on a book project in the 1990s and now teaches at Rutgers. “The fact that they were able to bring the public display under the control of disinterested historians, rather than Nixon apologists, was the real achievement…What’s really behind that is a kind of admission that they lost the battle.”
Bradlee talked up The Post’s role in breaking Watergate Monday; Woodward modestly downplayed it, saying official investigators also did a lot of heavy lifting.
Through it all they told lots of jokes.
Bradlee said he didn’t ask Woodward to tell him who Deep Throat was until after Nixon had left office.
“I didn’t tell my wife,” Bradlee said. “That’s a secret.”
“Good decision,” Woodward told him.
When a fly swirled around Bradlee’s head on the stage, Woodward suggested Bradlee swing his “stick” (the cane) at the bug.
Woodward invoked an old saying that great newspaper reporting is done “in defiance of management.”
“Go ahead, give me the finger,” he told Bradlee.
Bradlee obliged.
Many in the crowd were longtime Nixon backers. Republican Linda Wahl goes to the same Quaker church Nixon did growing up in Whittier. She didn’t want to give her age but said proudly that she voted for him in 1968 and 1972.
“I wanted to hear what they had to say, their side,” she said. “They’re to be commended for coming here.”
Democrat Natalie Sellers, a 72-year-old retired teacher, came to see the museum for the first time now that the new exhibit is open.
“I was absorbed, almost hypnotized, by Watergate,” she said. “I watched it religiously.”
In the history books, Woodward and Bradlee’s personas will be as linked as Nixon’s to Watergate. Both recognize that.
On Monday afternoon, before their talk, the pair took a tour of the library’s grounds.
“So here we are, Bob,” Bradlee said, surveying a rose garden outside the library.
They spotted the house where Nixon was born and decided it would be fun to check it out. It was after 5, and someone suggested the docents had locked up for the day. They walked over anyway.
“If not, we’ll break in,” Woodward deadpanned.
When Woodward walked up to the front door, the knob didn’t budge.
“The story of my life,” he said. “It’s locked.”
“To break into Nixon’s house – imagine that,” Bradlee said, chuckling.
He smirked when he saw the helicopter that Nixon fled the White House with on August 9, 1974.
“I remember that picture so well, God,” he said, imitating Nixon’s farewell wave as he left the White House lawn. “I remember that picture of him just like yesterday.”
“We can’t get in the house. Maybe we can get in and fly it away, Bob,” Bradlee said, pointing his cane toward the helicopter and laughing slightly.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to ride in it now,” he told Bradlee once they’d walked over. “Look at all the cracks!”
Naftali met them as they wandered back toward the museum from the helicopter. When he learned they couldn’t get into the house, he rushed off and returned a minute later with a beefy security guard who had a key.
See, all you need is a subpoena,” he joked. “You don’t break-in. That’s the lesson of this whole thing.”
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Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
The Independent
By Paul Bignell
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.
Iraq's burgeoning oil industry: Click HERE to upload graphic (160k)
The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.
The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".
But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.
Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.
The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.
Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."
The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.
The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."
After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [iraq] for the sake of their long-term future... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."
Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".
BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.
Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.
The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.
Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost decade, 2.7 million barrels a day seen as especially important at the moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington's main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.
Mr Muttitt, whose book Fuel on Fire is published next week, said: "Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq's oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.
"We see that oil was in fact one of the Government's most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize."
Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya's National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters. Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment.
Not about oil? what they said before the invasion
* Foreign Office memorandum, 13 November 2002, following meeting with BP: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity to compete. The long-term potential is enormous..."
* Tony Blair, 6 February 2003: "Let me just deal with the oil thing because... the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It's not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons..."
* BP, 12 March 2003: "We have no strategic interest in Iraq. If whoever comes to power wants Western involvement post the war, if there is a war, all we have ever said is that it should be on a level playing field. We are certainly not pushing for involvement."
* Lord Browne, the then-BP chief executive, 12 March 2003: "It is not in my or BP's opinion, a war about oil. Iraq is an important producer, but it must decide what to do with its patrimony and oil."
* Shell, 12 March 2003, said reports that it had discussed oil opportunities with Downing Street were 'highly inaccurate', adding: "We have neither sought nor attended meetings with officials in the UK Government on the subject of Iraq. The subject has only come up during conversations during normal meetings we attend from time to time with officials... We have never asked for 'contracts'."
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Was JFK killed because of his interest in aliens? Secret memo shows president demanded UFO files 10 days before death
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:35 AM on 19th April 2011
[click on link to view documents]
An uncovered letter written by John F Kennedy to the head of the CIA shows that the president demanded to be shown highly confidential documents about UFOs 10 days before his assassination.
The secret memo is one of two letters written by JFK asking for information about the paranormal on November 12 1963, which have been released by the CIA for the first time.
Author William Lester said the CIA released the documents to him under the Freedom of Information Act after he made a request while researching his new book 'A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier.'
Alien researchers say the latest documents, released to Mr Lester by the CIA, add weight to the suggestion that the president could have been shot to stop him discovering the truth about UFOs.
In one of the secret documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, JFK writes to the director asking for the UFO files.
Released: Letter from JFK to CIA director asking for access to UFO files, which has been released to an author under the Freedom of Information Act
In the second memo, sent to the NASA administrator, the president expresses a desire for cooperation with the former Soviet Union on mutual outer space activities.
The previously classified documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act to teacher William Lester as part of research for a new book about JFK.
He said that JFK’s interest in UFOs could have been fuelled by concerns about relations with the former Soviet Union.
Beam me up: Days before he was killed, JFK wrote to the CIA demanding access to their files about UFOs
Unclassified: A second memo written by JFK on November 12 1963, 10 days before his assassination, which has been released by the CIA
‘One of his concerns was that a lot of these UFOs were being seen over the Soviet Union and he was very concerned that the Soviets might misinterpret these UFOs as U.S. aggression, believing that it was some of our technology,’ Mr Lester told AOL News.
‘I think this is one of the reasons why he wanted to get his hands on this information and get it away from the jurisdiction of NASA so he could say to the Soviets, “Look, that's not us, we're not doing it, we're not being provocative. “.’
But conspiracy theorists said the documents add interest to a disputed file, nicknamed the ‘burned memo’, which a UFO investigator claims he received in the 1990s.
The document, which has scorch marks, is claimed to have been posted to UFO hunter Timothy Cooper in 1999 by an unknown CIA leak, but has never been verified.
Disputed: In the 'burned memo' the CIA director allegedly wrote: 'Lancer [JFK] has made some inquiries regarding our activities, which we cannot allow'
In a note sent with the document, the apparent leaker said he worked for CIA between 1960 and 1974 and pulled the memo from a fire when the agency was burning some of its most sensitive files.
The undated memo contains a reference to ‘Lancer’, which was JFK's Secret Service code name.
On the first page, the director of Central Intelligence wrote: ‘As you must know, Lancer has made some inquiries regarding our activities, which we cannot allow.
‘Please submit your views no later than October. Your action to this matter is critical to the continuance of the group.’
The current owner of the ‘burned memo’, who bought it from Timothy Cooper in 2001 told AOL News that it shows that when JFK asked questions about UFOs that the CIA ‘bumped him off’.
UFO investigator Robert Wood said he has tested the paper it was printed on, the ink age, watermarks, font types and other markings.
He said: ‘I hired a forensics company to check the age of the ink and check several other things that you can date, using the same techniques you’d use in a court of law.’
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7519011.html
I reside a block from this old house in Houston and when I saw it go up for sale a week ago I alerted a friend who is close to reporters at the Houston Chronicle. The result is this news story. I am no fan of LBJ but I did not want the house to be sold and torn down. As historic as it is I doubt that a buyer will pay the asking price of $425,000.
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Accept £100,000 or get nothing, Murdoch lawyers tell Sienna
The Independent
By Cahal Milmo and Martin Hickman
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Actress sienna Miller has been offered £100,000 by the News of The World to settle her phone hacking damages claim and the newspaper will seek to have her case thrown out of court if she fails to accept, lawyers for the Sunday tabloid said yesterday.
The six-figure offer is the first evidence of a News International strategy to halt further revelations against it in civil cases by offering substantial settlements. It has emerged that the actress claims her email account as well as phone messages was hacked using information obtained by the private detective Glenn Mulcaire.
In a pre-trial hearing at the High Court, it was alleged that email hacking took place in December 2008 – nearly two years after Mulcaire was jailed for phone hacking and after a pledge from the NOTW that any illegal newsgathering activity had ceased.
In a statement last week, News International admitted liability and offered an unreserved apology to Ms Miller and seven others whose voicemails were eavesdropped by Mulcaire and NOTW journalists.
The settlement, known as a Part 36 offer, has the potential effect of preventing further disclosures in the case of Ms Miller or the other civil claims, where offers have now been made by the newspaper. Under civil court rules, a claimant (in this case Ms Miller) is liable for the legal costs of both sides if they reject a settlement offer and then pursue their case only to be awarded damages less than the original offer. Michael Silverleaf QC, representing the NOTW, told the court that the £100,000 offer needed to be compared to the maximum of £25,000 he believed Ms Miller would win by continuing her case and therefore any attempt to pursue the proceedings would be an "abuse of process". He said: "Civil litigation does not exist for people to vent their feelings. It exists to provide remedy."
Along with other public figures pursuing claims against the NOTW, Ms Miller has indicated that she wishes the full facts of the newspaper's activities against her to be made public rather than achieve a financial settlement. In an interview last month, she said: "It was ultimately just about standing up for yourself, what you believe is right and wrong. And I believe that [phone hacking] is really wrong, hence not settling out of court. But it's scary, and very expensive so far."
Hugh Tomlinson QC, for Ms Miller, told the court that the actress had not yet decided whether to accept or reject the NOTW offer and was in the meantime awaiting further evidence from the newspaper that could cast light on further claims, including an allegation that a password used for both her mobile phone and emails obtained by Mulcaire had been used in 2008.
Mr Tomlinson said: "We infer that this password was used to hack her emails."
Mr Justice Geoffrey Vos ordered the NOTW to return to court next month for a hearing to rule on its claim that a failure by Ms Miller to accept its £100,000 settlement should result in her case being thrown out.
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Four Phone-Hacking Cases to Be Tests for Further Claims, Judge Says
The New York Times
April 15, 2011
By SARAH LYALL
LONDON — Confronted with the prospect that dozens more potential phone-hacking victims might emerge and sue the News of the World tabloid, a High Court judge said on Friday that he would proceed with four of the current cases, using them as tests to assess damages for further claims.
“Otherwise we will be going on forever,” said the judge, Geoffrey Vos. “Some people may want to, but I don’t.” Judge Vos added that he wanted to “achieve a resolution of all these cases in the shortest possible time at the minimum possible cost.”
He said he would decide later which of the cases to bring forward, but that he was inclined to proceed with those brought by the actress Sienna Miller; the designer Kelly Hoppen; Andy Gray, a television sports commentator; and Skylet Andrew, a sports agent. Those cases have advanced further than some others, he said, and represent a range of issues and possible levels of damage.
Judge Vos made his remarks at a hearing intended to bring some order to the burgeoning civil actions proceeding against the News of the World. Last week, the newspaper admitted to illegally intercepting the voice-mail messages of eight public figures in the mid-2000’s. It apologized and offered to pay them compensation.
At the hearing on Friday, it emerged that the paper had offered one of the victims, Ms. Miller, 100,000 pounds in damages, and given her a deadline of 21 days to consider the offer. Her lawyer, Hugh Tomlinson, said she had not yet decided what to do.
At least 12 other people have begun cases against the newspaper, and at the hearing, a lawyer for the Metropolitan Police said that officers had uncovered at least 91 possible victims, and potentially many more, during their criminal investigation.
The courtroom was crammed with lawyers: for phone-hacking victims like Ms. Miller and Mr. Andrew; for the News of the World’s parent company, News Group Newspapers; for the police department, which has assigned 40 officers to the criminal case; and for Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator hired in the mid-2000’s by News of the World.
Along with the News of the World’s royalty reporter, Clive Goodman, Mr. Mulcaire was jailed in 2007 for hacking into the phones of aides to members of the royal family. Information found in his notebooks, which have been seized by the police, has led in the past few weeks to the detention and questioning of three senior News of the World journalists on suspicion of engaging in phone hacking.
At the hearing, Mr. Mulcaire’s lawyer, Alexandra Marzec, said that he wanted to protect himself against possible criminal charges and was thus admitting to nothing.
“The admissions which have been made by News Group in the past week are made solely on behalf of News Group, and Mr. Mulcaire does not admit doing anything, and does not associate himself with these admissions,” Ms. Marzec said.
The police said that they were currently going through 9,200 pages of material seized from Mr. Mulcaire.
Meanwhile, in a separate but related case, the police said that they were considering opening an investigation into whether journalists had paid police officers for information. The move stems from remarks made in 2003 by Rebekah Brooks, a former News of the World editor and now the chief executive of News International, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and is News Group’s parent company.
Mrs. Brooks told the culture and media committee at the time that “we have paid the police for information in the past.” Asked this week about the remark, Mrs. Brooks said in a letter to a different parliamentary group, the home affairs committee, that she had been speaking generally.
“I was responding to a specific line of questioning on how newspapers get information,” she wrote. “My intention was simply to comment on the widely held belief that payments had been made in the past to police officers. If, in doing so, I gave the impression that I had knowledge of any specific cases, I can assure you that this was not my intention.”
In a letter to the home affairs committee, Assistant Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said that a senior officer had been assigned “to conduct a scoping exercise to establish whether there are now any grounds for beginning a criminal investigation resulting from the comments made by Rebekah Brooks” in 2003.
A spokeswoman for News International said the company had no comment.
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Phone-hacking investigation identifies more than 91 victims
Scotland Yard detectives tell high court hearing that number of victims may be bigger than previously thought
By Vikram Dodd, Dan Sabbagh and agencies
guardian.co.uk,
Friday 15 April 2011 15.11 BST
Scotland Yard's renewed investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World has identified that the number of victims is in excess of 91 people far higher than previously estimated by detectives, the high court heard today.
The publisher of the newspaper has also offered Sienna Miller £100,000 in compensation and offered to pay the actor her costs an offer she has neither accepted nor rejected.
Detectives are trawling through 9,200 pages of material seized from a private investigator used by Rupert Murdoch's tabloid to hack into voicemails, a case management hearing to decide how best to handle the flood of lawsuits against the paper heard.
At the hearing in the high court, Jason Beer QC, representing the Metropolitan police, gave an idea of the scale of the scandal. Beer said that the number of potential victims is "substantially" higher than 91 people.
The figure of 91 is significant. Previously police had said they had recorded a total of 91 pin numbers necessary to access a mobile phone's voicemail in the possession of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the News of the World.
The police counsel told the hearing: "It is wrong to say that 91 is the answer, that that is the maximum [number of victims], it may be on a bigger scale."
The court hearing also heard of the offer to Miller, which was designed to reflect the number of times her phone had been targeted. Her case is one of the most advanced of the phone-hacking lawsuits, and arguably the highest profile because of her celebrity.
Mulcaire was convicted of intercepting voicemail messages in January 2007, along with the News of the World journalist Clive Goodman. During the course of the original investigation, police seized paperwork and records from Mulcaire, who was employed by the tabloid.
Subsequently, John Yates, the Met's acting deputy assistant commissioner, who handled a previous phone-hacking investigation, said that the police had only identified 10 to 12 victims. That figure is far lower than the level identified by the fresh investigation team, which is under the leadership of deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers.
Yates said earlier this month that he had quoted the figure on at least four occasions because prosecutors had told police they needed to prove not only that voicemail had been intercepted but also that this had been done before the messages had been heard by the intended recipient.
So far, 24 public figures who believe their voicemail messages were intercepted by journalists at the tabloid are suing News International, the UK newspaper arm of News Corp.
Many more are expected to come forward after News International apologised to eight victims last week and said it would set up a compensation scheme.
Law firm Mishcon de Reya, which is acting for several of the claimants, says it has received an unprecedented number of inquiries since News International published its statement, and estimates there could be more than 6,000 potential claimants.
Judge Justice Vos said that four test cases those of Sky Andrew, Kelly Hoppen, Sienna Miller and Andy Gray could be heard as early as December, but no later than February 2012
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Phone-hacking saga is complex and unpredictable ... with lots of loose endsNews Corp and its executives face many more weeks of uncertainty, writes Dan Sabbagh
Dan Sabbagh
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 14 April 2011 20.38 BST
Just a week ago, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation finally looked as if it had worked out a way to reassert control of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. However, the surprise arrest of Sunday tabloid veteran James Weatherup shows just how complex and unpredictable this saga is. An unexpectedly vigorous criminal inquiry – coupled with at least 24 civil suits from celebrities and politicians – shows there are too many loose ends to be swiftly tidied up by last Friday's admission of liability.
Weatherup may have been a key figure in the NoW newsroom since his return to the tabloid in 2003, but his name had not surfaced in any of the lawsuits brought against the newspaper. In the immediate aftermath of his early morning arrest, the company was struggling to establish what was happening. Even so, News Corp insiders were hinting they had factored in the possibility that more reporters might be arrested in addition to chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, who was detained last week.
There were suggestions emanating from Wapping that Weatherup might have been involved in some of the reporting relating to the case of Gordon Taylor, the Professional Footballers' Association chief who settled a phone-hacking lawsuit in 2007, winning an estimated £800,000 payout. But Weatherup's name was not recognised by Mark Lewis, the lawyer who won the payout, suggesting that the police inquiry is going to be more thorough than anybody predicted.
That is hardly what the Murdoch-owned publisher will have wanted, on the eve of a critical high court case conference at which it is hoping to persuade Mr Justice Vos to move to a quick settlement of at least eight of the outstanding civil cases. Last week, News Corp was arguing that its concession of liability in actions brought by the likes of Sienna Miller and Andy Gray meant there was only a limited need to disclose more evidence and fight it out in public – but lawyers representing all 24 cases being brought will argue otherwise. "Because their admission of liability has been so limited," said Lewis, who represents Max Clifford's ex-assistant Nicola Phillips, "and because each and every case is sufficiently different, I don't think they will succeed in having all the cases grouped in a single short action."
The decision by News Corp to bag up and hand over the contents of Weatherup's desk to police, rather than allow detectives to seize its contents, may yet turn out to be significant. News Corp is confident its actions, which kept detectives away from the tabloid's newsroom, were entirely within the law. However, the police prefer to conduct searches themselves – and not being allowed to do so may contribute to friction between the investigators and the publisher.
There have been other complications in the past week, too: the admission that the NoW was involved in the hacking of Tessa Jowell's voicemails brings the uncomfortable realisation that an effort was made to target a serving cabinet minister. Even if the purpose of the investigation was to find out more about her relationship with her husband, David Mills, the lawyer who allegedly took a bribe from Silvio Berlusconi, Jowell was nevertheless also the minister responsible for media policy, and therefore responsible for scrutinising the conduct of those doing the hacking.
With deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers saying privately that she will "follow the evidence" – code for saying the Met intends to be thorough – it is clear that News Corporation faces many more weeks of uncertainty before its executives know where this affair ends.
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Phone hacking: senior News of the World journalist arrested
James Weatherup in custody as further searches of News of the World offices are expected
By Amelia Hill
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 14 April 2011 10.41 BST
The police investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World has taken a dramatic turn with the surprise arrest of James Weatherup, a senior journalist at the paper.
He is the third current or former News of the World journalist to be arrested as part of Scotland Yard's new investigation into alleged phone hacking at the paper.
Weatherup, who has not previously been named in connection with the scandal, was arrested early on Thursday. He is currently in custody at a police station in outer London.
There are also expected to be further searches of the News of the World offices in Wapping shortly. It is thought that police felt the paper had failed to be fully co-operative during searches last week and officers are now determined to be more robust.
Weatherup was news editor at the News of the World for about 18 months from 2004, and was one of the inner circle of executives under the then editor, Andy Coulson, who became David Cameron's director of communications until earlier this year.
As the third news editor at the paper under Coulson, Weatherup was one of a handful of senior employees who would take part in private discussions of major news stories with other senior members of the paper.
Weatherup subsequently returned to being a senior reporter on the newspaper. He is a close colleague of Ian Edmondson and Neville Thurlbeck, who were arrested last week on suspicion of conspiring to intercept mobile phone messages.
Edmondson, the paper's former assistant editor (news), was dismissed in January. Thurlbeck is the News of the World's chief reporter.
Thurlbeck and Edmondson were arrested after voluntarily presenting themselves at different police stations in south-west London.
Both men were later released on police bail to return in September. Their homes, as well as Thurlbeck's office and computer at the News of the World offices, were searched by police.
It is believed Edmondson, who was sacked from the News of the World in January, and Thurlbeck have been implicated in the long-running scandal through documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the newspaper. Both Edmondson and Thurlbeck deny any wrongdoing.
News International had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
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News of the World phone hacking: John Whittingdale seeks public inquiry
Press Complaints Commission not up to the job, says chairman of Commons culture, media and sport select committee
By Josh Halliday
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday 13 April 2011 16.34
The chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, John Whittingdale, has called for a public inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's The Media Show, Whittingdale said there should be "some kind of commission or inquiry" into why a series of investigations by Scotland Yard failed to link any News International employees to phone hacking other than the News of the World's former royal editor, Clive Goodman.
Rupert Murdoch's news group last week issued a public apology to eight victims of phone hacking, including the actor Sienna Miller and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, and admitted for the first time that the practice was rife at the paper.
News International has also written to nine other alleged victims of News of the World phone hacking saying it was prepared to pay compensation if they obtained evidence from Scotland Yard to support their claims.
"There are some very big questions. What I find [most] worrying is the apparent unwillingness of the police, who had the evidence and chose to do nothing with it. That's something that needs to be looked into," Whittingdale said on Wednesday.
"It also raises some quite serious questions for the security of government. It seems pretty extraordinary that newspapers are able to listen in to the private conversations of Downing Street, royal staff and others.
"I'm wanting to know through the Home Office why those responsible for safeguarding security weren't able to do anything about it."
Whittingdale said the culture select committee was also "concerned" about previous assurances given to it by News International executives and Scotland Yard that an investigation had been carried out and that there was no new information.
"It wasn't just News International who told us that, it was also the police," he added. "In light of what's now apparent that's a most extraordinary statement."
The Conservative MP said there was "no reason" why a fresh inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World could not be done by the newspaper industry itself, but added that the sector's self-regulatory body, the Press Complaints Commission, was not up to the job.
"I think the newspaper industry should be very worried," Whittingdale added. "The PCC has not got a particularly strong reputation as a result of this. I don't think they've covered themselves in glory."
Any fresh inquiry should be carried out by "someone who is independent, experienced and powerful who is not in thrall to the press", he added.
"It's a case for the industry recognising that if it is to retain its credibility it needs a stronger, more independent PCC which has real sanctions. If the [newspaper industry] shrug their shoulders, I think cries for [a tougher system of regulation] will grow.
"Newspapers would be very foolish to believe [the phone-hacking scandal] doesn't have implications for the whole way the press operates in this country
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Rebekah Brooks: I have no knowledge of actual payments to police
News International chief clarifies 2003 statement that 'we have paid the police for information in the past'
Read Rebekah Brooks' letter to MPs in full
Read Rebekah Brooks' 2003 evidence to MPs
By James Robinson
guardian.co.uk,
Monday 11 April 2011 15.42 BST
The former Sun editor, Rebekah Brooks, told a powerful group of MPs on Monday she has no knowledge of any actual payments the paper might have made to police offers in exchange for information.
In a letter to the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, Brooks, who is now chief executive of the paper's parent company News International, said she had no "knowledge of any specific cases" in which payments to police might have been made.
Brooks was responding to a request from the committee made last month to detail how many police officers received money from the Sun, which she edited from 2003 to 2009, and when the practice ceased.
Brooks, who edited the Sun's sister title the News of the World before moving to the daily in early 2003, told MPs on the culture, media and sport select committee eight years ago:"We have paid the police for information in the past."
In her letter to the home affairs select committee chairman, Labour MP Keith Vaz, Brooks said she was grateful for the opportunity to clarify the evidence she gave in March 2003.
She added that she was talking in general terms about the newspaper industry and its relationship with the police, rather than the paper she edited specifically, when she appeared before the culture media and sport committee in 2003.
"As can be seen from the transcript, I was responding to a specific line of questioning on how newspapers get information," Brooks wrote. "My intention was simply to comment generally on the widely-held belief that payments had been made in the past to police officers.
"If, in doing so, I gave the impression that I had knowledge of any specific cases, I can assure you that this was not my intention."
According to the transcript of 11 March 2003 on the culture select committee website, Labour MP Chris Bryant asked both Brooks and Andy Coulson, then editor of the News of the World, whether "either of your newspapers ever use private detectives, ever bug or pay the police?".
A long answer from Brooks followed about the use of private detectives and listening devices in the public interest, in which she gave a specific example of where a News of the World reporter recorded a conversation to establish that a woman was "selling her daughters" to local "paedophiles", but which did not address the question of whether the police had been paid for news stories.
Bryant then followed up, asking specifically: "And on the element of whether you ever pay the police for information?"
Brooks replied: "We have paid the police for information in the past." Bryant then asked her "will you do it in the future?", to which she answered: "It depends."
At that point Coulson cut in, saying: "We operate within the code and within the law and if there is a clear public interest then we will. The same holds for private detectives, subterfuge, a video bag – whatever you want to talk about."
Vaz wrote to Brooks at the end of last month following evidence given to the home affairs select committee in March by John Yates, the acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, in which he said Scotland Yard was undertaking "research" on whether police officers had received payments from newspapers.
The Labour MP for Leicester East also wrote to Yates in March on behalf of the home affairs select committee asking for more details about this research.
In the same evidence session Yates reiterated his claim that the Crown Prosecution Service had initially advised the Met to adopt a narrow interpretation of the law relating to phone hacking during its initial investigation into allegations of widespread hacking at the News of the World.
He said that advice "permeated the whole investigation/inquiry" and helped explain why the police had only identified a small number of victims.
The committee has asked Yates to supply a copy of the legal advice the Met received from the CPS when Yates reviewed the hacking evidence last autumn.
Yates said its advice changed after a case conference held in October 2010, during which the CPS made it clear that a wider definition of what constitutes a hacking offence should be adopted.
MPs have asked for copies of the legal advice supplied before and after that October meeting. A spokeswoman for Vaz said he had received a reply from Yates and the committee is likely to make it public in due course.
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, contradicted Yates's claims about the CPS advice when he appeared before the home affairs committee earlier this
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Gordon Brown phone-hacking inquiry halted by civil service
Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, blocked attempt by former PM to hold judicial inquiry into phone-hacking allegations
By Nicholas Watt, Patrick Wintour and Dan Sabbagh
guardian.co.uk,
Sunday 10 April 2011 22.15 BST
Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, blocked an attempt by Gordon Brown before the general election to hold a judicial inquiry into allegations that the News of the World had hacked into the phones of cabinet ministers and other high-profile figures.
As News International prepares to pay compensation to victims of the illegal practice, the Guardian understands that Britain's most senior civil servant took steps to prevent an inquiry on the grounds that it would be too sensitive before last year's general election.
The then prime minister, who warned Peter Mandelson in 2009 that his phone had been hacked on behalf of the News of the World, wanted a judicial inquiry after new evidence of the illegal practice emerged that summer.
The Guardian revealed in July 2009 that Rupert Murdoch's News Group newspapers had paid more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal illegal phone hacking by private investigators on behalf of News of the World.
The revelations were of acute political sensitivity because Andy Coulson, editor of the News of the World between 2003 and 2007, was by then David Cameron's communications director. Coulson was asked to appear before the Commons culture select committee after the publication of the Guardian disclosures.
O'Donnell told Brown, who lost the support of the News of the World and its sister paper, the Sun, in the autumn of 2009, that it would be inappropriate to hold a judicial inquiry so soon before the election. Coulson was by then one of the most senior members of Cameron's inner circle and was appointed as the Downing Street director of communications after the general election. He has consistently denied any knowledge of wrongdoing, and resigned from No 10 in January saying coverage of phone hacking had made his job impossible.
The disclosure that O'Donnell blocked an inquiry came as Boris Johnson called for a "truth and reconciliation" commission to establish the full facts about phone hacking. In an interview on Sky News, the mayor of London said: "Plainly the police need to get on with it. But I would like to see the entire newspaper industry, what we used to call Fleet Street and indeed the media generally, have a general truth and reconciliation commission about all this. I think all the editors and all the proprietors should come forward, put their hands up, say whether they know of any of their reporters or employees who may or may not have been engaged in these practices which have now been exposed at the News of the World. I think that would be a very healthy development."
Johnson spoke out after News International issued a public apology on Friday to eight victims of phone hacking. These included the actor Sienna Miller, the former Labour culture secretary Tessa Jowell, the football agent Sky Andrew and the publicist Nicola Phillips.
Charlotte Harris of Mishcon de Reya, which represents Andrew, said she was advising her client not to accept compensation until he sees all the documentation in the possession of News International. Harris told Radio 4's The World This Weekend: "Sky Andrew has been finally offered an apology and we are thinking about what to do. There isn't actually a particular figure they have offered us for anything. The position Sky is taking is not disimilar to that of Sienna Miller and Nicola Phillips. It is: isn't this a bit early, we are just about to have disclosure of the documents, we need to have a look and see what has happened and get to the bottom of it and then we'll see where it goes from there."
Asked if she would advise her clients not to settle without disclosure of notes and emails, Harris said: "Yes. What we have at the moment is an apology and an admission, having been working on this for a very long time. We haven't even got near the truth yet. We have got orders that mean we are now going to be able to have a chance at getting to the bottom of it, so we need to find out. How are we meant to know what to accept if we don't know the full extent of what has happened?"
Harris added that thousands of phones could have been monitored. "If you consider that if you hack into one person's phone, you have access to everyone who has left a message for them. And then, if you go into the person who has left a message, you get all of theirs. You have got to be running into several thousand, just from that methodology. To put a figure on it, it is certainly not a handful - maybe 4,000, 6,000, 7,000 - a huge amount of people."The Guardian understands Gordon Brown was so concerned that News of the World was targeting Labour figures that he warned Peter Mandelson his phone had been hacked. Mandelson approached the information commissioner, but he did not confirm that his phone had been hacked.
Critics of Murdoch have urged the government not to decide on his bid to take control of BSkyB until the allegations have been fully investigated. But advisers to the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, say he is prevented by law from taking the scandal into account when he considers whether it is appropriate for News Corporation to be allowed to buy all of BSkyB. The £8bn merger, which the minister has already said he is minded to approve, is being examined on its impact on "media plurality". However, Hunt's lawyers say that phone hacking cannot be considered in an inquiry as regards plurality. They say it could only form part of a "suitability of persons" test into whether Murdoch and the bosses of News Corporation were appropriate individuals to own BSkyB. That test was designed to prevent pornographers, for example, becoming media owners - but it cannot now be invoked in the case of the Murdoch merger. The Enterprise Act that covers the UK's merger rules only allows one referral on one set of grounds, which means £8bn deal could only ever have been referred for political approval on either media plurality or suitability of persons grounds, but not both.
A Cabinet Office spokeswoman said: "We never comment about any advice from a cabinet secretary to a prime minister on any issue."
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Exclusive: Royals pulled into phone-hacking scandal
Prince Andrew's daughters are among the latest high-profile figures said to be victims of News International's illegal activities
The Independent
By James Hanning
Sunday, 10 April 2011
The Royal Family has been pulled into the News International phone-hacking affair, dealing a blow to the latest desperate attempt by Rupert Murdoch's media giant to hide the true extent of the scandal, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice are suspected targets of the media empire's hacking activities, and their father, the Duke of York, has privately expressed exasperation at the apparent breach of his family's privacy. Suspicions that the princesses were targets arose after Eugenie was the subject of an attempted mugging while travelling in Cambodia with a friend two years ago. The attack, in Phnom Penh during the girls' gap year, was thwarted by bodyguards but details of the incident quickly found their way into The Sun newspaper and other News International (NI) publications.
This is the first instance of the Royal Family being drawn into the phone-hacking row since the conviction of Clive Goodman, the News of the World's royal editor four years ago. Goodman pleaded guilty to intercepting messages left on phones of aides to Princes William and Harry and was jailed for four months. Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator used to carry out the interceptions, was jailed for six months.
It is understood Prince Andrew, himself the subject of intense media scrutiny, and his ex-wife, the Duchess of York, also believe they were personally targeted. Prince Andrew, though angered by what he sees as the intrusion into his daughters' lives, has no plans to take the matter further.
Related articles
•News of the World apologises to hacking victims
•Charlotte Harris: 'Sorry' means something else at News International
•Leading article: News International has a long way to go
In today's edition, the News of the World apologised "publicly and unreservedly" to all victims of the hacking. It added: "What happened to them should not have happened. It was and remains unacceptable."
But revelations of further targeting of members of the Royal Family will increase pressure on NI, whose admission of liability on Friday has been widely interpreted as the latest attempt by the media empire to restrict the growing damage caused by the scandal. NI has been forced to retreat from its initial claims that the hacking was the work of a single "rogue reporter" as a stream of embarrassing disclosures showed that as many as four former NoW news editors and many other staff may have been aware of the operation.
They expressed regret for the phone hacking and offered £20m for a group settlement of eight current legal cases including the former culture secretary Tessa Jowell and actress Sienna Miller, but confined their contrition to hacking cases from 2004-2006. Despite NI's admission of liability, scores more cases are currently being pursued by solicitors through the High Court. Earlier this month, Crown Prosecution Service documents revealed how the original Scotland Yard inquiry uncovered more than 4,000 names or partial names and nearly 3,000 full or partial telephone numbers from documents seized when Mulcaire and Goodman were arrested.
Lawyers acting for some of those pursuing legal claims – including those who have been made the NI offer – denied that they were ready to settle, and indicated their legal actions would continue.
Charlotte Harris of Mischon de Reya, who acts for several clients taking action, writes in today's IoS that NI had been "caught by a metaphorical long lens in a compromising position". "They will never want to 'reveal all'," she said. Mark Thomson, speaking for Sienna Miller, said: "Sienna's claims are based on outrageous violations of her privacy. Her primary concern is to discover the whole truth and for all those responsible to be held to account."
The former MP George Galloway, who said he had been shown proof that his phone had been hacked, dismissed the apology as a "cynical attempt to protect the company's chief executive", Rebekah Brooks.
Ms Brooks was the editor of NoW from 2000 to 2003, leaving shortly before NI says the hacking took place. She has consistently denied any knowledge of illegal activity, but told MPs that her newspaper (then The Sun) paid police officers for information. Ms Brooks is said to be close to Rupert and James Murdoch and is also friends with David Cameron. Her successor as NoW editor, Andy Coulson, who resigned when Goodman and Mulcaire were convicted, later became Mr Cameron's director of communications, only to resign earlier this year when the hacking scandal made it "impossible" for him to do his job. He also denies knowledge of any wrongdoing.
The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said yesterday it was important to establish who knew about the "criminal behaviour", and when. "We need to know who knew about these actions and when," he said. "We also need to know how far across the organisation knowledge of these actions went."
Brian Paddick, a former senior Scotland Yard officer who believes his own phone was hacked, said NoW was apologising only in cases where it had been "caught red-handed". "These are people who have issued proceedings. They've got the courts to force NI to hand over evidence, and it would appear that in these cases NI has been caught red-handed, and only in those circumstances are they prepared to make an apology and pay up," he said.
NI's liability admission completely turned on its head previous claims that it was the work of a single "rogue" reporter, Goodman, and Mulcaire. Last week, the former NoW news editor Ian Edmondson and its current senior reporter Neville Thurlbeck were arrested by Scotland Yard detectives investigating hacking allegations. Both men have been bailed.
The latest arrests followed the disclosure of detailed evidence in the civil cases being brought against the Murdoch papers. These include evidence that the phones of the parents of the murdered Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were targeted by NoW.
Mr Justice Vos, the High Court judge who is handling more than a dozen legal cases, is said to have become exasperated at NI's reluctance to disclose material sought by lawyers involved in the legal battle. Further potentially embarrassing disclosures are expected to be ordered by the judge at a case conference this week and seem certain to give rise to further evidence of the extent of unlawful activity.
The disclosures are fuelling calls for a full-scale investigation into the scandal. Last week, the Government admitted there was a "need" to answer concerns about the failure to prevent the phone-hacking scandal, suggesting the possibility of an independent inquiry. Baroness Doocey, the Lib Dem spokeswoman on the Metropolitan Police Authority, said an outside force needed to investigate Scotland Yard's involvement and its "cosy" relationship with both NoW and NI.
The police are reportedly confident that they can secure convictions at a low level, but their critics will be seeking to apply pressure on them to uncover wrongdoing at senior levels.
Downing Street is also deeply embarrassed by allegations of a close relationship between it and the Murdoch organisation. A former NoW staffer, Paul McMullan, last week told the actor Hugh Grant in a New Statesman interview that he believed Rebekah Brooks knew about the hacking and how she enjoyed a close friendship with David Cameron.
"This is not being played for laughs in Downing Street. Cameron is embarrassed by his association with Rebekah Brooks," one senior Conservative source said.
NI denied claims that Ms Brooks, a key lieutenant of James Murdoch, will follow him to the US later this year.
The judge who brought Murdoch's empire to book
Sir Geoffrey Vos is likely to be remembered in times to come as the lawyer who forced an apology out of one of the most powerful and influential media organisations in the world.
Not that he sought the apology. But his firm and sure handling of the legal battles spiralling out of the News International hacking scandal has forced the Murdoch empire to hold its hands up and admit wrongdoing – up to a point.
"The Vos-man", as he has been dubbed, first became embroiled in the News of the World affair when he heard Max Clifford's case against the newspaper in March 2010, which eventually settled out of court for more than £1m. Since then, Mr Justice Vos has consistently called for a full disclosure of evidence relating to News of the World journalists' dealings with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
His insistence that News International disclose relevant material sought by hacking claimants and their lawyers is widely credited with forcing the Murdoch press to make its unprecedented public apology on Friday.
Born to a Bermondsey leather merchant in 1955, Sir Geoffrey was educated at Cambridge University. He was called to the bar in 1977. After becoming a QC in 1993, he established himself as a leading light of commercial law chambers 3 Stone Buildings. A succession of multimillion-pound financial dispute cases rapidly consolidated his reputation as a Chancery heavyweight.
He counselled the Mirror Group pensions trustees in their $100m claim against Morgan Stanley in 1995, and leading the Office of Fair Trading's unsuccessful case against the Premier League's rules for selling rights to televised matches.
In 2007, as Bar Council chair, Sir Geoffrey defended the independence of the legal profession, under assault from government reforms and cuts to legal aid. More recently, he has been hailed a champion of social mobility, putting his weight behind the previous government's Milburn report on access to the bar.
When not sitting, he chairs the Social Mobility Foundation, which supports young people from low-income backgrounds into top universities and professions, and last year won The Lawyer magazine's outstanding achievement award for his efforts.
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Phone hacking: Rupert Murdoch 'urged Gordon Brown' to halt Labour attacks
Former PM was asked to 'defuse' NoW row, says ex-minister
Ed Miliband calls for full details of 'criminal behaviour'
By Toby Helm and James Robinson
guardian.co.uk,
Saturday 9 April 2011 22.16 BST
Rupert Murdoch used his political influence and contacts at the highest levels to try to get Labour MPs and peers to back away from investigations into phone hacking at the News of the World, a former minister in Gordon Brown's government has told the Observer.
The ex-minister, who does not want to be named, says he is aware of evidence that Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation, relayed messages to Brown last year via a third party, urging him to help take the political heat out of the row, which he felt was in danger of damaging his company.
Brown, who stepped down as prime minister after last May's general election defeat for Labour, has refused to comment on the claim, but has not denied it. It is believed that contacts were made before he left No 10. The minister said: "What I know is that Murdoch got in touch with a good friend who then got in touch with Brown. The intention was to get him to cool things down. That is what I was told."
Brown, who became increasingly concerned at allegations of phone hacking and asked the police to investigate, had claimed that he was a victim of hacking when chancellor. He made Murdoch's views known to a select few in the Labour party.
In January, it was revealed Brown had written at least one letter to the Metropolitan police over concerns that his phone was targeted when he was still at the Treasury.
Suggestions that Murdoch involved Tony Blair in a chain of phone calls that led to Brown have been denied by the former prime minister. A spokesman for Blair said the claim was "categorically untrue", adding "no such calls ever took place". The allegation will, however, add to concerns about the influence Murdoch wielded over key political figures at Westminster and in Downing Street.
It will also raise further questions over the decision by David Cameron to appoint Andy Coulson, a former NoW editor who resigned over phone hacking, as his director of communications.
A spokesman for News International, the paper's owner, rebuted the claim, saying: "This is total rubbish."
Labour leader Ed Miliband weighed in on the hacking scandal , saying it was important to establish who knew what about "criminal behaviour" and when. "What we have seen is a serious admission of wrongdoing by News International," he said during a visit to Swindon. "We have now got to get to the bottom of any criminal behaviour, which is a matter for the police. We need to know who knew about these actions and when. We also need to know how far across the organisation knowledge of these actions went."
On Friday, News International issued a public apology to eight victims of phone hacking, including the actress Sienna Miller and Tessa Jowell, the former culture secretary in Tony Blair's government. It was the first time the company had admitted the practice was common at the News of the World.
However, questions remain over whether the victims will settle. Miller's solicitor, Mark Thomson, of law firm Atkins Thomson, said: "She is awaiting information and disclosure from the News of the World which has been ordered by the court and will consider her next steps once this is provided."
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said a decision on the planned takeover of BSkyB by News Corp would not be influenced by the controversy. A spokesman said: "The culture secretary has to make a quasi-judicial decision about the impact of the proposed merger on media plurality issues alone. Legally the culture secretary cannot consider other factors as part of this process and under law phone hacking is not seen as relevant to media plurality."
The scandal has focused attention on senior executives at News International, including its chief executive Rebekah Brooks, formerly Wade. Former MP George Galloway, who said he had been shown proof his phone had been hacked, claimed the NoW's apology was a "cynical attempt to protect the company's chief executive Rebekah Wade … Wade delivered the statement on Friday which sought to put an end to the controversy. However, by attempting to limit the admission of liability to the two years between 2004 and 2006 and by so doing effectively sacrificing two senior executives and former editor Andy Coulson she appears to be trying to exculpate herself from the scandal."
The publicist Max Clifford, who brought a private case against NoW that ended with a reported £1m settlement, said the newspaper had been forced into the apology. "It's now acknowledged this was widespread at News International.
-----------------------------
News of the World phone-hacking row: four years of denials
Andy Coulson and Rupert Murdoch repudiated phone-hacking allegations several times before News International's apology
guardian.co.uk,
Saturday 9 April 2011 23.55
"Clive Goodman's actions were entirely wrong and I deeply regret that they happened on my watch … I also feel strongly that when the News of the World calls those in public life to account on behalf of its readers, it must have its own house in order"
Andy Coulson, resigning as editor of the News of the World, January 2007
"If you're talking about illegal tapping by a private investigator, that is not part of our culture anywhere in the world, least of all in Britain."
Rupert Murdoch, February 2007
"I have never condoned the use of phone hacking and nor do I have any recollection of incidences where phone hacking took place … I took full responsibility at the time for what happened but without my knowledge and resigned"
Andy Coulson, 21 July 2009
"We reject absolutely any suggestion there was a widespread culture of wrongdoing at the News of the World"
News of the World spokesperson, September 2010
"We have very, very strict rules. There was one incident more than five years ago … the person who bought the bugged conversation was immediately fired. If anything was to come to light, and we have challenged those people who have made allegations to provide evidence … we would take immediate action"
Rupert Murdoch, 15 October 2010
"I don't accept there was a culture of phone hacking at the News of the World. All I can tell you is that, as far as my reporters are concerned, the instructions were very clear: they were to work within the law and within the PCC code. It's in their handbooks."
Andy Coulson at the Tommy Sheridan perjury trial, 9 December 2010
"In January, News International voluntarily approached the Met police and provided information that led to the opening of the police investigation. News International has consistently reiterated that it will not tolerate wrong-doing… We continue to co-operate fully with the police investigation."
News International, 5 April 2011
"Following an extensive internal investigation and disclosures through civil legal cases, News International has decided to approach some civil litigants with an unreserved apology and an admission of liability in cases meeting specific criteria. We have also asked our lawyers to establish a compensation scheme with a view to dealing with justifiable claims fairly and efficiently."
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A Wapping payout!
Mea culpa that reaches right to the very top
The Independent
By Ian Burrell, Media Editor
Saturday, 9 April 2011
News International's admission that it was responsible for the hacking of the phones of public figures ranging from a former member of the Cabinet to a Hollywood actress represents a seismic moment for the management of Britain's biggest newspaper publisher, reverberating all the way back to Rupert Murdoch.
The acceptance of liability on a grand scale has implications which stretch across the Atlantic to the heart of News Corporation. Why, Mr Murdoch will surely ask himself, didn't he take a personal grip of this situation before it reached such a pass?
At Dow Jones & Co, the publishers of Mr Murdoch's prized Wall Street Journal, the chief executive Les Hinton might ask himself why, as executive chairman of News International (NI) throughout the period in question, he presided over an organisation responsible for such behaviour, but told MPs that "there was never any evidence delivered to me" suggesting that phone hacking went beyond Clive Goodman, the royal editor of the News of the World jailed in January 2007.
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It is a difficult time, too, for James Murdoch, whose promotion and relocation to New York last month looks like a timely escape from the firing line. Three years ago, James sanctioned a £1m payment to phone hacking victim Gordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballers' Association, and he is open to criticism that he – newly installed as head of News Corp in Europe & Asia – failed to appreciate the seriousness of the scandal.
The chief executive of NI, Rebekah Brooks, is also damaged by yesterday's admission. She not only has a responsibility for the NOTW, but edited the newspaper between 2000 and 2003. She denies knowing about phone-hacking when it was taking place. Yesterday's statement from NI was pointedly headed "2004-2006", a period throughout which Andy Coulson edited the paper. Coulson lost his job, then had to quit as director of communications at Downing Street, and has told detectives that he was unaware of a hacking culture under his editorship. The confirmation of eight further cases – with the certainty of more to come – threatens to expose other members of his newsroom and undermine his claim to MPs that Goodman was a "rogue case".
The current editor of the NOTW, Colin Myler, must be embarrassed by yesterday's statement. In the wake of Goodman's conviction, Myler was put in charge of an investigation into the extent of hacking at the paper. Two years later he told MPs that he had studied 2,500 emails, yet had uncovered "no evidence" that required further action. But in some cases, courts have heard allegations that other NOTW journalists were party to the hacking process.
Last week, two NOTW figures, the former head of the newsroom Ian Edmondson (who has been sacked by NI) and the current chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to access the voicemails of public figures.
In the civil case brought by football pundit Andy Gray, in which NI has admitted liability, a court was told that documents marked by Mulcaire for "Greg" referred to Greg Miskiw, a former journalist at the NOTW.
Yesterday Ms Wade emailed staff expressing regret for the company's behaviour. "It is now apparent that our previous inquiries failed to uncover important evidence and we acknowledge our actions then were not sufficiently robust," said the statement.
Emerging unscathed from this is Will Lewis, the former Daily Telegraph editor who joined NI as group general manager last autumn and has spent months preparing the strategy for yesterday's grand mea culpa.
NI hopes its offer of a compensation scheme, headed by an ex-High Court judge, will mean that Mr Justice Vos, who next Friday oversees a case management conference of the 24 suits against it, will appreciate its efforts to hasten the legal process. He is not the only person the company needs to win round.
Who should be worried at News International - and why
James Murdoch
As executive chairman of News International, he personally authorised a £700,000 pay-off to Gordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballers' Association, after his messages were hacked.
Les Hinton
Chief executive of News International at the time covered by the apology. He told MPs: "There was never firm evidence provided that implicated anybody else other than Clive. It just did not happen."
Colin Myler
Current editor of the News of the World, who was in charge of the internal investigation. He told MPs there was "no evidence" anyone else had been involved, having trawled "thousands" of emails.
Andy Coulson
Former News of the World editor who said under oath: "I don't accept there was a culture of phone-hacking at the News of the World. There was a very unfortunate case involving Clive Goodman."
Rebekah Brooks
Now CEO of News International, she is a close friend of Andy Coulson and was his predecessor
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Phone hacking: NI to apologise to victims including Sienna Miller
NoW publisher admits liability for hacking into phones of eight public figures and offers to set up compensation fund
By James Robinson
guardian.co.uk,
Friday 8 April 2011 15.25 BST
News International is to apologise and offer to pay damages to eight News of the World phone-hacking victims who are currently suing the paper, including actor Sienna Miller, former culture secretary Tessa Jowell and former Sky Sports commentator Andy Gray.
In one of the most dramatic apologies in the history of Fleet Street, Rupert Murdoch's News International said its previous inquiries into phone hacking were "not sufficiently robust" and issued an "unreserved apology" for the fact hacking took place at the News of the World.
The others who will be offered apologies and damages are Jowell's former husband David Mills, football agent Sky Andrew, publicist Nicola Phillips, Joan Hammell, an former aide to former deputy prime minister John Prescott, and interior designer Kelly Hoppen. News International will offer to pay damages and legal fees.
In the Hoppen case, News International is admitting her phone was hacked on several occasions from 2004 to 2006. It still contests her claim that her phone was hacked in 2009.
News International is likely to offer to settle more cases. A total of 24 people have begun legal actions but the company believes that in many of the cases too little evidence has so far been produced to judge whether or not it was culpable. Others taking legal action including actors Steve Coogan and Leslie Ash.
It will propose next week to Justice Vos, the high court judge in charge of all the hacking cases, that all the cases should be heard together.
The publisher said: "Following an extensive internal investigation and disclosures through civil legal cases, News International has decided to approach some civil litigants with an unreserved apology and an admission of liability in cases meeting specific criteria.
"We have also asked our lawyers to establish a compensation scheme with a view to dealing with justifiable claims fairly and efficiently."
It added: "We will, however, continue to contest cases that we believe are without merit or where we are not responsible."
No executives are expected to resign as a result of the apology.
Charlotte Harris, a media lawyer at Mischon de Reya, which represents agent Sky Andrew, said her firm will be considering whether to accept News International's offer of damages after taking advice from clients. She added: "An admission from the News of the World is something we've been working towards for years now. They persisted with their 'one rogue' defence for far too long.
"It was clear for a very long time that the practice of phone hacking was rife and that the News of the World should take responsibility. I hope these apologies do not come at the cost of finding out precisely what happened and who was responsible for covering it up."
The Guardian revealed in July 2009 that News International had made secret payments totalling £1m to settle cases involving three people including Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the PFA.
News International claimed hacking at the paper was carried out by a "rogue reporter", former royal editor Clive Goodman. He was jailed in January 2007 along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire for illegally intercepting voicemail messages left on mobile phones belonging to members of the royal household.
Andrew Neil, a former Murdoch executive and former Sunday Times editor, told BBC News: "This is one of the most embarrassing apologies I've ever seen from a major British corporation.
"I don't think NI had anywhere else to go. The evidence was piling up against them. It may cost them a lot more than they think. There are plenty of other people involved. They are trying to close it down with their chequebook but I don't think they're going to succeed."
He added that settling civil actions would have no bearing on the criminal investigation currently being carried out by the Metropolitan police.
Solicitor Mark Lewis said none of the clients he represents have heard from News International. "No deals have been done and no apologies have been received yet."
He described News International's admission as "a responsible step in the right direction ... But it's a step that [they] have been forced to take ... It's still early days to work out what will be paid ... and who the victims are. It will improve tabloid journalism and it will stop people using cheap tricks to find things out."
Tom Watson, the Labour MP for West Bromwich East, said: "One of the biggest media organisations in the world has been brought to its knees in the courts." But he added: "I think we need all the facts out there."
The only reason they are offering to apologise now is because 14 civil litigant cases are currently going though the courts."
They should apologise to their readers. I would like to hear from Rupert Murdoch".
He said Murdoch should apologise for the manner in which the News of the World obtained their stories and root out the executives and reporters who were responsible for phone hacking."
Referring to the new police inquiry which began in January, Watson added: "The new investigation team are clearly doing a more thorough job [than the original 2006 inquiry] but there are still lots of loose ends in this."
He said: "News International won newspaper on the year in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005, when we know that phone hacking was going on. They subverted journalist. They undermined out democracy."
Keith Vaz MP, who chairs the home affairs select committee, said: "This is a step forward by those who don't want to spend entire days and months of their lives in court." He added that it would not prevent the police investigation continuing, however.
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[Letter sent on my legal letterhead]
March 31, 2011
Robert S. Mueller, III
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20535-0001
Re: Misprision of Felony
Dear Director Mueller:
I am a member of the District of Columbia and Texas Bars, and as such am an Officer of the Court. Thus, I have the legal obligation not to engage in misprision of felony, that is, not to engage in the concealment or non-disclosure of someone else’s felony. In the situation that I am about to describe three separate felonies may have been committed by the same individual, although the statute of limitations may or may not have run as to all or any of them.
I am author of a newly published book titled Watergate Exposed: How the President of the United States and the Watergate Burglars Were Set-up, told to me as original attorney for the Watergate Seven by Robert Merritt, former FBI and Washington, D.C. Police Confidential Informant. A copy of the book is enclosed
The book was printed by TrineDay Publishers and distributed to Amazon.Com and bookstores in early February 2011 after galleys had been approved by both Robert Merritt and me. However, within days after the book had been printed and distributed, to the shock and consternation of TrineDay and me, Robert Merritt disclosed for the first time certain controversial matters that were not covered in the book. It is about these matters that I am writing because they may be felonious in substance. They are:
(1) Lying to and misleading two committees of Congress and a Special Prosecutor.
(2) Participating in the theft a top secret “Eyes Only” U.S. Government national security document obtained through kidnapping, blackmailing and extorting the General Counsel of the CIA.
(3) Distributing candy containing poison to anti-war demonstrators and later claiming over a hundred of these persons died as a result.
On March 17, 2011, Robert Merritt was interviewed by Eben Rey on radio station KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles in a segment of a program titled, “Something is happening with Roy in Hollywood – part B.” The hour long interview can be listened to by using the following link:
http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/
In the radio interview Robert Merritt disclosed the following:
(I) Merritt went public in 1973 in exposing his role as an FBI and Police Confidential Informant in COINTELPRO at the direction of Washington, D.C. Police Officer Carl Shoffler. Shoffer, who was actually an Army Military Intelligence Agent assigned to the police, had been Merritt’s handler since 1970. In other words, Merritt’s going public about the illegal COINTELPRO operations was in itself a COINTELPRO operation orchestrated by Military Intelligence.
Merritt testified in 1973 before the Senate Watergate Committee in Executive Session and before the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and in 1975 before the House Select Committee on Intelligence (Pike Committee.) Please see pages 81-103 in the enclosed book for copies of the relevant Watergate Special Prosecution Force documents obtained from the National Archives: memorandum of July 24, 1973 to Terry Lenzer from Jim Moore regarding interview with Robert Merritt; memorandum of November 20, 1973 regarding interview with Robert Merritt; memorandum of November 27, 1973 regarding interview with Robert Merritt; and memorandum of December 20, 1973 regarding interview with Carl Shoffler. Merritt so testified before these government entities without disclosing that he was doing so pursuant to a COINTELPRO operation being orchestrated by Military Intelligence. In essence, he purposely misled these investigating bodies as to the real purpose of his so testifying.
An examination of the interviews by the Watergate Special Prosecution Force cited above reveals that, acting in behalf of Military Intelligence, Merritt had three targets: the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police, the FBI, and me (because I was a closet gay.)
[FBI files on Merritt as one of its confidential informants are reproduced in Appendices A and B in the enclosed book.]
Merritt disclosed in the March 17th KPFK radio interview that he was ordered to go public with what he knew about FBI and police COINTELPRO activities by Officer Shoffler and
Military Intelligence as a ruse to gain the confidence of those who were targets of COINTELPRO. However, there is no evidence that this subterfuge was successful. Instead it appears that the real reason that Military Intelligence ordered him to go public was to target the FBI and Washington, D.C. police and expose their roles in COINTELPRO. As evidence of this
please see page xiv of the enclosed book that reproduces the front page of The Daily Rag, a respected Washington alternative newspaper, of October 5-17, 1973, which carried the headline “An exclusive interview: FBI Informer Confesses.” There is no mention, of course, in the interview of Merritt that he was being handled by Military Intelligence or that his “confession” was a COINTELPRO scheme concocted by Military Intelligence allegedly to ingratiate him with COINTELPRO targets.
With the indictment, prosecution and conviction in 1979 of FBI Associate Director Mark Felt and Assistant Director Edward Miller, Military Intelligence apparently achieved its goal in orchestrating Merritt’s public disclosure of his COINTELPRO activities.
(2) The second matter Merritt disclosed in the radio interview was his role in obtaining an “Eyes Only” 400-page document titled Crimson Rose from within the CIA. Crimson Rose was a CIA report of its spying on the infamous military intelligence operation mounted inside the White House by the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer. This operation secretly stole over 5000 documents from President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Crimson Rose was an acronym that stood for “Confidential Report on Intelligence of Military Secret Operations on Nixon” and whose subtitle was “Report of Operations of Secret Surveillance and Eavesdropping.”
Upon learning of the existence of Crimson Rose, Military Intelligence devised a plan to steal the file from within the bowels of the CIA. Military Intelligence deemed obtaining it to be absolutely essential. This was because, in the wake of Watergate and the disclosure of other unseemly government activities, in 1975 the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, known as the Church Committee after its chairman, Senator Frank Church, initiated hearings into the activities of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The great fear of Military Intelligence was that should the Church Committee or the Pike Committee in the House get its hands on a copy of Crimson Rose in the course of their investigations of the CIA, disclosure of its contents would lead to exposing the role of Military Intelligence in bringing down the Nixon Administration and would drastically affect how the American public perceived its military. Disclosure could lead to a complete reorganization of the Pentagon and court martial trials, perhaps criminal trials, of those involved.
As recounted by Merritt, Shoffler played a key role in carrying out the plan to obtain Crimson Rose. In June 1975 Mitchell Rogovin, General Counsel to the CIA, was lured by someone he knew and trusted to dinner at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. In the course of the dinner his drink was spiked, causing him to appear inebriated. Several men assisted him to a freight elevator that transported them to a floor above. Merritt operated the service elevator. The regular operator of the freight elevator had been given one hundred dollars and told to get lost for an hour. Rogovin was then carried into a hotel room and quickly stripped naked. He was positioned on a bed and a prostitute climbed into bed beside him. Shoffler had arranged with hoodlum Buster Riggin, for whom Merritt worked undercover in behalf of Shoffler, for the use of the prostitute from the prostitution ring managed by Riggin. Graphic photographs were taken of Rogovin and the woman in different sexual positions. Subsequently, Rogovin was shown the photographs and told that unless he obtained and delivered the Crimson Rose report from within the CIA, the compromising photographs of him would be leaked. He was also threatened that his son would be set up and falsely charged with selling illegal drugs if he did not cooperate.
Presented with these horrific threats, Rogovin chose to retrieve the Crimson Rose report and give it to the military agents involved, whose leader was Shoffler. When Rogovin gave it to Shoffler, the 400-page Crimson Rose file was encased in a formidable laminated binder bearing the seal of the CIA that had a broken chain dangling. The “Eyes Only” document had been protectively situated, chained to a circular table in a secure room inside CIA. In the center of the table were a large number of other CIA “Eyes Only” documents in their chained binders, allowing the documents to be read but not removed from the table. When given to Shoffler, the chain to the Crimson Rose document was broken. It had been cut. Shoffler later showed the document to Merritt.
Rogovin resigned as CIA General Counsel the next year.
(3) In a prior interview in February 2011of Merritt by Eben Rey on radio station KPFK, Merritt disclosed that military intelligence through Shoffler had ordered him to distribute candy containing slow-acting poison to anti-Vietnam War demonstrators and as a result of this he estimated over 100 persons died.
With TrineDay’s publication of Watergate Exposed in early February 2011, my agreement to assist Merritt in writing his story was completed. These possible felonious actions were withheld by Merritt and disclosed to TrineDay and me for the first time after the book had been printed. Thus, Merritt’s actions have severely compromised the integrity and marketability Watergate Exposed because in the book he fraudulently lied about his reason for breaking his confidential informant status with the FBI, when instead he had clandestinely agreed to go public as part of a sinister COINTELPRO operation orchestrated by Military Intelligence. This fraud by Merritt was committed against TrineDay, me and purchasers of the book. I have asked TrineDay to demand that Merritt, as a result of his fraudulent actions, return to it the monetary advance against royalties that he received. There is some reason to believe that Merritt even today may be under the control of a handler from the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department.
Earlier this month TrineDay requested that Merritt provide it with the files on the three possible felonious matters that he had belatedly publicly disclosed. Merritt refused to do so and instead, as disclosed in his March 17th radio interview, shipped them off to Lyn Colodny, author of Silent Coup: The Removal of the President, and to Colodny’s associate, Luke Nichter of C-Span. Thus, should you wish to view these files, you should contact these individuals, who may have also in recent weeks conducted taped interviews of Merritt in which he may have made additional felonious disclosures.
As to the contents of Watergate Exposed, it should be noted that I am the author solely of the Prologue materials and the Epilogue and that the remainder of the book, which comprises most of the contents, is what Merritt told me or supplied me in my writing of it.
By means of this letter I am not presuming to request that the FBI take any specific action. It may well be that you will treat the information in this letter merely as clearing up some historical mysteries involving the FBI that grew out of the Watergate era.
However, I do plan to make this letter public by posting it on the Watergate Topic of the Education Forum, which is based in the U.K., so as to disassociate myself from the possible felonious disclosures made by Merritt after publication of Watergate Exposed.
Should you need additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Very truly yours,
Douglas Caddy
Copies to: Raymond W. Kelly, Commissioner, New York City Police Department
Kris Millegan, TrineDay Publishers
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Phone hacking: Mobile companies challenge John Yates's evidence
Four phone companies dispute that police 'ensured' they warn potential News of the World phone-hacking victims
by Nick Davies
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 7 April 2011 19.48 BST
John Yates, the senior police officer at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal, faces a new set of allegations that he has misled parliament.
A Guardian investigation has found that all four leading mobile phone companies dispute evidence that Yates has given to a select committee about police efforts to warn public figures whose voicemails were intercepted by the News of the World.
During the original police inquiry in 2006 phone companies identified a total of at least 120 politicians, police officers, members of the royal household and others whose voicemail had been accessed by Glenn Mulcaire, the NoW's private investigator. Yates told the home affairs select committee last September that police had "ensured" the phone companies warned all of their suspected victims. But all four companies have told the Guardian police made no such move and that most of the victims were never warned by them.
Two of the companies, Orange and Vodafone, wrote to Scotland Yard last autumn, spelling out the fact that they had told none of their customers that they had been hacked and that police had never asked them to. The home affairs committee on Thursday said that more than four months after those letters were sent to the Yard, it was unaware of Yates having made any attempt to tell it that there might be a problem with the evidence he gave.
The committee chairman, Keith Vaz, said he would write to Yates and to the phone companies to clarify the position.
The latest allegations come after a public dispute in which Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, has challenged Yates's account to parliament of the advice that police were given by prosecutors and the impact this had on the original investigation of the affair and the number of victims who were identified. At a session of the committee on Tuesday, Vaz said the DPP's evidence clearly contradicted the account which Yates had given to the committee the previous week and that he would be writing to Yates to ask for an explanation. Yates is currently acting deputy commissioner of the Met.
In relation to the phone companies, the key evidence from Yates was given to the committee in September last year when Vaz asked him whether police had warned all the public figures whose pin codes had been found in Glenn Mulcaire's paperwork.
Yates said: "We have taken what I consider to be all reasonable steps in conjunction with the major service providers – the Oranges, Vodafones – to ensure where we had even the minutest possibility they may have been the subject of an attempt to hack or hacking, we have taken all reasonable steps."
MP Mary Macleod asked what he meant by "reasonable steps", and Yates replied: "Speaking to them or ensuring the phone company has spoken to them."
The four leading mobile phone companies all say that this is not correct and that the police did not ask them to warn any victims among their customers. All of them searched their call data as part of the police inquiry in 2006 and all initially followed the standard procedure, which is to keep such inquiries confidential.
Vodafone found about 40 customers whose voicemail had been intercepted. They told none of them that they had been victims but warned a small number in particularly sensitive positions to check their security. A spokesman said: "We were not asked by the Met police to contact any customers but believed it was important that we inform as many as we could. As it was a live investigation, however, we were very limited in the information we could pass on to customers. We were only able to remind customers, where we believed it was appropriate, of the importance of voicemail security."
Orange identified about 45 customers whose voicemail had been dialled from Mulcaire's phone numbers. It said it warned none of them but passed the customers' details to Scotland Yard. A spokesman for Orange said: "At no point during the investigations were we asked, nor did we feel it right, to take further action in relation to these customers. The Metropolitan police are fully aware of our position on this."
T-Mobile gave police information from its call records but says it never finally identified customers who were victims and therefore warned none. A spokesman said: "We have never been supplied with a list of names or telephone numbers by the police of customers who may have been compromised, nor were we asked by the police to contact any of them."
O2 identified about 40 customers whose voicemail had been successfully accessed. It is the only company to have taken a corporate decision to approach and warn all of them. Asked about Yates's evidence, a spokesman for O2 said: "We weren't contacted by the police and asked proactively to get in touch with customers to warn them if they had been victims."
It is now clear that police failed to inform not only those victims who were identified by the phone companies but a large number of others whose details were found in notebooks, computer records and audiotapes seized from Mulcaire in August 2006 but never properly investigated until the Yard began its third investigation into the affair in January.
The failure means that police broke an agreement with the DPP that they would contact "all potential victims". It also means many of the victims were deprived of the chance to check the call data, which is kept by the phone companies for only 12 months, and that they had no opportunity to change their pin codes or to assess the damage done by the interception of their messages.
The immediate problem for Scotland Yard is that the phone companies, like the DPP, are now challenging the evidence given to the public and parliament by the most senior officer in the affair, John Yates.
In July 2009, he made a public statement: "Where there was clear evidence that people had potentially been the subject of tapping, they were all contacted by police." In February 2010 he wrote to the culture, media and sport committee: "Where information exists to suggest some form of interception of an individual's phone was or may have been attempted by Goodman and Mulcaire, the Metropolitan police has been diligent and taken all proper steps to ensure those individuals have been informed."
Yates's evidence about the phone companies last September prompted an exchange of letters. According to one senior police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, Detective Chief Superintendent Philip Williams, who works directly under John Yates, wrote to mobile phone companies in October, claiming that he believed that the companies had contacted "all of the people potentially identified as being victims."
On November 2, Orange wrote back to DCS Williams. The company is understood to have told him that police had never asked them to contact victims and that they had not done so. On November 22 Vodafone also wrote to DCS Williams. It is understood that the company expressed surprise that he was claiming to believe that it had contacted victims in 2006; it pointed out that it was for the police, not for the phone companies, to establish who had been victims of crime; and indicated it had no record of the police ever asking it to contact customers.
Last month – more than four months after that exchange of letters – Yates gave evidence on phone-hacking to the home affairs committee and to the culture, media and sport committee. He made no reference to the letters. Nor did he tell the committee that the two companies had challenged his previous account. However, in evidence to the media committe, he did indicate some awareness of a problem. He said: "I think there is some confusion with some of the mobile phone companies as to who was doing what, and we need to get some clarity around that … I am not sure that the follow-up was as thorough as it could have been."
In a statement on Thursday night, Scotland Yard said Yates had told the home affairs select committee in September 2010: "We think we have done all that is reasonable but we will continue to review it as we go along." A spokesman said the correspondence with the phone companies was part of that review and Yates had acknowledged in recent evidence to both select committees that more should have been done for victims. A spokesman said the current inquiry was reviewing the victim strategy
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Ian Burrell: A disturbing day for News International's heavyweights
The Independent
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
Rupert Murdoch's News International, publisher of the News of the World, yesterday issued a statement about its pro-activity in the current police investigation. "News International has consistently reiterated that it will not tolerate wrongdoing and is committed to acting on evidence," it said.
But although the publisher has already sacked one of the two men arrested yesterday – Ian Edmondson, the NOTW head of news, who was dismissed in January – the other, the NOTW's chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, has remained a key and active member of its newsroom.
The Met's new investigation team will now seek to ascertain whether the two men were part of, or knew of, a culture of phone hacking at the Sunday paper that went beyond Goodman.
Related articles
•Hacking: senior News of the World pair arrested
•Prosecutor questions evidence of Met's Yates
Detectives already have access to a treasure trove of information seized during the original police investigation after a raid in 2006 on the home of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator on the NOTW's payroll who was jailed for six months for hacking into voicemails. These detailed notes, along with thousands of emails recently uncovered by News International, are to be made available to lawyers acting for a long queue of celebrities, including Sienna Miller and Steve Coogan, who believe their phones were hacked by the NOTW and are taking legal action against Murdoch's company.
The biggest question is how far up the chain of command at News International the phone hacking goes – and whether the questioning of Edmondson and Thurlbeck will lead to further arrests.
Last week Rupert Murdoch announced that his son James, who has been in charge of his British operation since the hacking scandal re-emerged two years ago, would relocate to New York. It means that the media empire's most senior full-time executive in London will be Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of the News of the World. Ms Brooks has some explaining to do herself as the deadline approaches for her to reply to the Home Affairs Select Committee about how her paper paid police officers for information
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Phone hacking: NoW journalists arrested
Former news editor and current chief reporter arrested after presenting themselves at separate London police stations
by Amelia Hill
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 5 April 2011 12.36 BST
The former news editor and current chief reporter from the News of the World are in police custody after being arrested on suspicion of unlawfully intercepting mobile phone voicemail messages.
Ian Edmondson and Neville Thurlbeck had voluntarily presented themselves at different London police stations this morning and were arrested. It was expected their homes would be searched by officers at midday.
Scotland Yard has confirmed that two men, aged 50 and 42, "were arrested this morning after attending separate police stations in south-west London by appointment".
"They remain in custody for questioning after being arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section 1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977, and unlawful interception of voicemail messages, contrary to Section 1 Ripa [Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act] 2000," the briefing added.
"The Operation Weeting team is conducting the new investigation into phone hacking. It would be inappropriate to discuss any further details regarding this case at this time."
The Guardian understands that Edmondson, NoW's former head of news, is being questioned by officers at Wimbledon police station. Thurlbeck, the paper's chief reporter, is at Kingston police station.
The arrests are the first salvo in Operation Weeting, whose tasks include establishing whether there are grounds for bringing further prosecutions in the phone-hacking scandal.
Edmondson and Thurlbeck will probably be released later this afternoon after the search of their homes is complete.
The two men have been implicated in the long-running scandal through documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the newspaper.
Edmondson, who was sacked from NoW in January, denies any wrongdoing.
Thurlbeck was interviewed by police last autumn. No charge has been brought against either man, both of whom have denied all involvement in criminal activity.
The arrests come on the day that Keir Starmer QC, director of public prosecutions, gives evidence at a home affairs committee from witnesses into the unauthorised intercepting of communications.
Only one reporter, the former royal editor Clive Goodman, has been convicted of a crime as part of the scandal. He and Mulcaire were sentenced to jail terms in January 2007.
No other reporters or executives were questioned by the initial police investigation. It was only after a series of high court cases brought by the actor Sienna Miller, the football pundit Andy Gray and others that the Metropolitan police were forced to reveal material found on Mulcaire's computer, during a 2006 raid of his home.
Last Friday, a high court judge ordered NoW to make available Mulcaire's notes to the growing list of people suing the paper. Justice Geoffrey Vos, who is in charge of the hacking cases, ordered "rolling disclosure" to all claimants.
Hundreds of thousands of emails will now be handed over to alleged victims.
Rupert Murdoch and the Corruption of the British Media
in Political Conspiracies
Posted
Phone hacking: Met admits to only warning 36 people they may be targeted
Disclosure of formerly secret number exposes Met to complaint it breached agreement to warn potential victims
By Nick Davies and James Robinson
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 26 April 2011 21.14 BST
The Metropolitan police has admitted that during the first four years of the phone-hacking affair it warned only 36 people they may have been targeted by the News of the World's private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
Scotland Yard's latest inquiry, which was launched in January, is believed to be contacting up to 4,000 people whose names and personal details were found in Mulcaire's possession during the original police investigation in 2006.
The disclosure of the number – which Scotland Yard had previously insisted on keeping secret – exposes the Met to the complaint that it breached an agreement with the director of public prosecutions that it would warn all "potential victims" in the affair.
It will also revive criticism that it has consistently played down the scale of criminal activity commissioned by the News of the World.
Scotland Yard has previously repeatedly refused to disclose the number of victims it had warned, rejecting applications under the Freedom of Information Act on the grounds that releasing it would necessarily disclose the identities of those warned, and that this would breach their privacy.
However, in a sharp change of policy, the Met's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, volunteered that during the 2006 inquiry police had warned 28 people they may have been victims; and that after the Guardian revived the affair in July 2009 they warned eight more.
In a letter to John Whittingdale, chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, Yates – who was responsible for dealing with the hacking affair for nearly 20 months – gave no explanation for the failure to inform more than 36 potential victims. He said: "I have accepted that more could and should have been done in relation to those who may have been potential victims."
The new inquiry, which is not being overseen by Yates, is known to have approached scores of politicians, police officers, actors, sports personalities and others who had previously been unaware that the Met held evidence to suggest their voicemail messages may have been intercepted by Mulcaire.
Many are now suing News International, which owns the News of the World. Some are also seeking a judicial review of the Met's actions.
Yates's disclosure appears to contradict evidence he gave to the media select committee in February last year. On that occasion he said that where there was evidence that "interception was or may have been attempted by Mulcaire, the Met police has been diligent and taken all proper steps to ensure those individuals have been informed."
In September he told the home affairs select committee that Met policy was "out of a spirit of abundance of caution to make sure that we were ensuring that those who may have been hacked were contacted by us".
In his letter to Whittingdale, Yates also confirmed that during a brief investigation last autumn, police interviewed a total of four people under caution.
Yates did not name them, but they included Sean Hoare, the former News of the World journalist who told the New York Times that he had been actively encouraged to hack voicemail by his editor, Andy Coulson, who went on to become the prime minister's media adviser and who has always denied all knowledge of illegal activity.
When Yates's officers cautioned Hoare that anything he said might be used in evidence against him, he declined to answer questions.
The Yates letter also disclosed more details of his social contacts with senior editors from News International. He acknowledges that he had dinner with the News of the World editor Colin Myler at the Ivy, one of London's most exclusive restaurants; that he had two dinners with the editor of the Sunday Times; and a further dinner with the editor and crime editor of the News of the World four months after he had decided in July 2009 that there was no basis to reopen an investigation into the paper.
Yates reveals in his letter that he failed to disclose a meeting with Neil Wallis, who was deputy editor at the paper at the time of the original hacking inquiry and left in August 2009 after six years in the job. He described a meeting with Wallis earlier this year as a "private engagement" and said "relevant senior officers" at Scotland Yard "have been made aware that Mr Wallis and I know each other".
Whittingdale has now written to Yates again asking him who at the Met was informed about his relationship with Wallis and when.
The investigation into phone-hacking, which is being led by the deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, has resulted in the arrest of three News of the World executives, including two who are still employed by the paper, this month. All of them were released without charge.
Separately, the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham told MPs on the Home Affairs select committee on Tuesday that the law on phone-hacking is confusing and in urgent need of clarification.