Rupert Murdoch and the Corruption of the British Media

[Douglas Caddy]

News of the World reporter played police Milly Dowler voicemail

Daily Telegraph

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter

2:00PM GMT 23 Jan 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9032994/News-of-the-World-reporter-played-police-Milly-Dowler-voicemail.html

A News of the World reporter played police a tape-recording of Milly Dowlers hacked voicemails within a month of her disappearance, but officers chose not to investigate, a police report has disclosed.

Surrey Police knew in April 2002 that the tabloid had illegally accessed the schoolgirls mobile phone messages, but instead of pressing charges a senior officer from the force invited two News of the World staff to a private meeting at the forces headquarters to discuss the case.

Up to three other police forces were also aware of the hacking by the News of the World, but they did nothing until newspapers reported it last July.

MPs said the Surrey force now had serious questions to answer about its response, and suggested the force could have prevented phone-hacking becoming endemic at the News of the World if it had acted sooner.

A report on Surrey Polices internal investigation into why it failed to investigate the hacking also discloses that a News of the World reporter told police the newspaper had obtained Millys mobile number and the PIN number used to access her voicemails from her schoolfriends.

In fact, the News of the World had paid the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to do so.

The report also reveals that a News of the World investigator posed as one of Millys friends in an attempt to blag information about her, and suggests that a News of the World investigator also posed as Millys mother.

The 13 year-old went missing on her way home from school on March 21, 2002, and on April 13 a News of the World reporter contacted Surrey Police to say they had potentially significant information.

The reporter said a voicemail left on Millys phone suggested she had tried to get work with a recruitment agency.

Surrey Police officers working on the Dowler investigation were unaware that the agency had left the voicemail message until the force was contacted by the News of the World reporter. A week later the News of the World played a tape recording of the message to a Surrey Police press office.

The police report, which has been submitted to the Leveson Inquiry, does not name the News of the World journalists who discussed voicemails with its officers, nor does it name the officers and press officers who knew about it.

But officers from Sussex Police, who reviewed the case in 2002, also failed to do anything about the hacking. The report implies that West Mercia police would also have been told about it, but it does not say whether the Metropolitan Police, which worked closely with Surrey on the case, was told.

The internal police report, published by the parliamentary culture, media and sport committee, discloses that three weeks after Milly went missing, a woman claiming to be Sally Dowler phoned a recruitment agency asking if Milly was working for them.

The agency had earlier left a message on Millys mobile phone by mistake, after taking down the wrong number for one of its clients. The message was then accessed by the News of the World, which became 110 per cent sure the 13-year-old had run away from home and was looking for work.

Although the report by Surrey Police does not draw any conclusions about who was impersonating Millys mother, it leaves no doubt that the blagger could only have been someone who knew about the voicemail that had been left in error.

It also reveals that a senior Surrey Police officer and press officer met two representatives of the News of the World at the forces headquarters in July 2002, but no notes of what was said at the meeting have been found.

The investigation, which is ongoing, has not yet established how some of Millys voicemail messages came to be deleted in the days after she was abducted, which gave her parents false hope that she was still alive.

Mulcaire has denied that he deleted the messages, and News Group Newspapers, which closed down the News of the World because of the scandal, has said it has no evidence to suggest it was responsible for the deletions.

But it states conclusively that a suggestion made by the former NoW lawyer Tom Crone that the voicemails were given to the newspaper by the police is not correct.

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: The information provided by Surrey Police raises serious questions over what they knew about phone hacking and when.

Had they acted in 2002 or had Sussex Police flagged this up in their review of Operation Ruby it may have prevented the culture of hacking becoming endemic at News of the World.

The Home Affairs Committee has also received a letter from Surrey Police with additional information to questions posed back in October 2011. We will be considering this information carefully and will look into investigating the reasons why Surrey Police did not follow up on this evidence.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Douglas Caddy

[Douglas Caddy]

Leveson inquiry: Lord Patten accuses politicians of 'grovelling' to Murdoch

BBC Trust chair and former Tory minister says current MPs are mistaken in believing newspapers determine their fate

By Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Monday 23 January 2012 14.55 EST

Lord Patten, the former Conservative cabinet minister who is now chairman of the BBC Trust, said politicians were wrong to seek close relationships with newspaper proprietors and had "demeaned themselves" by "grovelling" to the likes of Rupert Murdoch.

Giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry, the man who ran John Major's surprise election win in 1992 even disputed the claim that the Tories were only re-elected that year because of the Sun – the tabloid which ran the headline "If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights" on polling day.

Patten said the present crop of MPs were mistaken in believing newspapers determined their fate and should realise that Rupert Murdoch's help is only available when it wasn't needed. "I think major political parties, and particularly their leaders, over the last 20 or 25 years have often demeaned themselves by the extent to which they've paid court on proprietors and editors," he told the inquiry.

"Of course I'm in favour of talking to editors and journalists, but I'm not in favour of grovelling and I think politicians have allowed themselves to be kidded that editors and proprietors determine the fate of politicians. I think that there's plenty of evidence that in some cases, particularly News International newspapers, they back the party that's going to win an election. So they give you what you don't need in return for more than a great deal of faith," he added.

He said it was wrong to think that it was Margaret Thatcher, under whom he served in office, who started this trend of meeting journalists and proprietors. Patten acknowledged that she did spend more time with some journalists not because they supported her policies but "because she thought they were intelligent and she liked arguing with them". One of her favourites, he revealed, was the Guardian political commentator Hugo Young and "they were chalk and cheese in their political views".

He said the balance in democracy "tipped" in favour of newspaper proprietors once the "assumed truth took root that News International determined the outcome of elections" in the early 1990s. Patten said Conservative party research conducted at the time of the 1992 election found that the majority of Sun readers thought it was a Labour newspaper.

In a dig at David Cameron, Patten revealed that he had met the prime minister only once since becoming chairman of the BBC Trust in May 2011. "I'd have presumably seen the prime minister and other party leaders more frequently if I'd been a News International executive," he said.

Although he confirmed Murdoch had personally spiked a book of his about his time as governor of Hong Kong, he said he held no "vendetta" against him and said some newspapers in Britain only survived because of him. He described the media mogul as "a sort of entrepreneurial genius". Lord Patten cited Sky News's "spirited independence" in covering the phone hacking affair as proof that pluralism was alive and well in the media.

The BBC chairman said the onus lay on the press to come up with a system of regulation that worked for the public as well as the publishing industry, adding that he could imagine some sort of statutory framework which didn't curtail the freedom of the press. However he said so far newspapers had yet to come up with a blueprint that would work. "I think it would be preferable if the written media themselves would clean out the stables," he said.

Earlier the BBC director general Mark Thompson told the inquiry he was opposed to broadcast-style statutory regulation of the print media. "In my view it is quite desirable in terms of plurality of media in this country that the press are not as regulated and constrained as a broadcast media whose power … and whose reach is broader and more immediate."

Thompson also admitted that the BBC spent £310,000 on private investigators between 2005 and 2011 and had earlier used Steve Whittamore, the investigator who was convicted in 2005 for illegally obtaining and disclosing information under the Data Protection Act. He said he believed there was a "strong public interest justification" for using Whittamore who had been asked to help establish whether a known paedophile was getting a flight out of the country.

[Douglas Caddy]

Newspapers face wave of lawsuits over use of private eye Whittamore

Lawyers tell Information Commissioner to notify victims who were targets of illegal searches

The Independent

By Ian Burrell

Thursday 26 January 2012

News organisations responsible for more than 17,000 dubious personal information checks carried out by a disgraced private detective could face civil litigation under plans to notify victims that they were targeted.

Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, is facing a legal challenge to release details of victims identified in Operation Motorman, an investigation into the activities of the Hampshire-based private eye Steve Whittamore, who was convicted of illegally accessing personal data in 2005. Acting on legal advice, the campaign group Hacked Off has written to Mr Graham, demanding he inform the thousands of people who are listed in Whittamore files held by the Information Commissioner's Office as having been the targets of apparently illicit searches, including criminal-records checks, vehicle-registration inquiries and information "blags".

Newspaper groups have in recent months been given access to the files by the ICO. In its letter, seen by The Independent, Hacked Off argues that targets should be notified so they have an opportunity to challenge claims by the news groups that the searches were done in the public interest.

In an official report based on Operation Motorman and subtitled The Unlawful Trade in Confidential Personal Information, the ICO said: "This was not just an isolated business operating occasionally outside the law, but one dedicated to its systematic and highly lucrative flouting."

The Operation Motorman inquiry has been referred to repeatedly during Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into media standards. Motorman's former chief investigator, Alec Owens, who had been The Independent's whistleblower in stories on the ICO's failure to interrogate journalists, voiced his concerns in evidence to the judge.

Tina Weaver, editor of the Sunday Mirror, a major client of Whittamore's, told the inquiry "it would be surprising" if all the 123 transactions between the private detective and her paper were lawful. Express Newspapers admitted it continued to use Whittamore until July 2010. And the Mail on Sunday said it had spent £20,000 on his services and continued to hire him for 13 months after his arrest in 2003.

In its letter to Mr Graham, who appears before Lord Justice Leveson today, Hacked Off says: "It is likely, if not inevitable, that media organisations have illegally retained and processed data which the ICO has judged to have been illegally obtained."

If the ICO refuses to notify the people who were targeted by Whittamore, Hacked Off and its supporters will likely seek to have that decision subjected to judicial review. The ICO said Mr Graham would be addressing the issue today at the Leveson Inquiry.

The Independent revealed in September that Whittamore's targets included victims of some of the worst crimes from the past 15 years

[Douglas Caddy]

Sun journalists and police officer arrested in corruption investigation

Met police search News International's headquarters in Wapping as four current and former Sun employees are arrested

By Lisa O'Carroll and Josh Halliday

guardian.co.uk,

Saturday 28 January 2012 07.49

Four current and former senior Sun journalists and one serving police officer have been arrested as part of Scotland Yard's investigation into police corruption.

The Metropolitan police have also launched a search at News International's headquarters in Wapping, east London, in an attempt to secure any potential evidence relating to alleged payments to police by journalists.

Officers were accompanied by lawyers who arrived at the Sun's offices between 6am and 8am on Saturday morning. They are there to ensure that "journalist privilege" in relation to sources is not compromised.

It is the first time since the phone-hacking scandal erupted that the Sun has been targeted in such a major way, but sources stressed the dawn raid had nothing to do with voicemail interception and was solely related to paying police for stories.

The four Sun employees arrested are understood to be Mike Sullivan, the Sun's crime editor, the former managing editor Graham Dudman, the executive editor, Fergus Shanahan, and Chris Pharo, a newsdesk executive.

The arrests came after information was passed to the police by News Corporation's internal investigations unit, the Management and Standards Committee. It was set up by Rupert Murdoch in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, which erupted last July, and operates independently of News International.

It is understood that staff and management at the Sun had no warning of the police plans to make arrests or conduct a search of the paper's newsroom.

A statement from News Corp in New York said: "Metropolitan police service (MPS) officers from Operation Elveden today arrested four current and former employees from the Sun newspaper. Searches have also taken place at the homes and offices of those arrested.

"News Corporation made a commitment last summer that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated.

"It commissioned the Management and Standards Committee to undertake a review of all News International titles, regardless of cost, and to proactively co-operate with law enforcement and other authorities if potentially relevant information arose at those titles.

"As a result of that review, which is ongoing, the MSC provided information to the Elveden investigation which led to today's arrests.

"No comment can be made on the nature of that information to avoid prejudicing the investigation and the rights of individuals."

The Management and Standards Committee has been charged with ridding the company of old practices and illegal activities such as phone hacking which led to the abrupt closure of the News of the World in July after 168 years. One source said. "They are there to drain the swamp."

In his witness statement to the Leveson inquiry earlier this month, the Sun's editor, Dominic Mohan, said: "To the best of my knowledge, the Sun has never knowingly paid or made payments in kind to police … for information."

Scotland Yard confirmed in a statement that the investigation "relates to suspected payments to police officers and is not about seeking journalists to reveal confidential sources in relation to information that has been obtained legitimately."

It is understood that three of the four journalists were arrested before 8am on Saturday while the fourth was arrested in mid-morning.

"Home addresses of those arrested are currently being searched and officers are also carrying out a number of searches at the offices of News International in Wapping. These searches are expected to conclude this afternoon," the Met said in an earlier statement.

A source said police were interested in everything from "notepads, emails, Post-it notes".

All four men were being questioned at police stations in Essex and London, police said. Fourteen people have so far been arrested under Operation Elveden – 13 by the Metropolitan police and one by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The operation is being run in conjunction with Operation Weeting, the Met inquiry into the phone hacking of voicemail boxes.

It was launched after officers were handed documents suggesting that News International journalists made illegal payments to police officers.

Others questioned as part of the inquiry include the former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, the ex-Downing Street communications chief Andy Coulson, the former News of the World managing editor Stuart Kuttner, the paper's former royal editor Clive Goodman, the former News of the World crime editor Lucy Panton and the Sun district editor, Jamie Pyatt.

Brooks and Coulson are both former editors of the News of the World, which was closed in July at the height of the hacking scandal following revelations that the murdered teenager Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked.

Deborah Glass, the deputy chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, said: "It will be clear from today's events that this investigation is following the evidence.

"I am satisfied with the strenuous efforts being made by this investigation to identify police officers who may have taken corrupt payments, and I believe the results will speak for themselves

[John Simkin]

On Saturday morning, the police arrested four journalists who have worked for Rupert Murdoch. For a while, it looked as though these were yet more arrests of people related to the News of the World but then it became clear that this was something much more significant.

This may be the moment when the scandal that closed the NoW finally started to pose a potential threat to at least one of Murdoch's three other UK newspaper titles: the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times.

The four men arrested on Saturday are not linked to the NoW. They come from the Sun, from the top of the tree – the current head of news and his crime editor, the former managing editor and deputy editor.

Nothing is certain. No one has been convicted of anything. The four who were arrested on Saturday – like the 25 others before them – have not even been charged with any offence. But behind the scenes, something very significant has changed at News International.

Under enormous legal and political pressure, Murdoch has ordered that the police be given everything they need. Whereas Scotland Yard began their inquiry a year ago with nothing much more than the heap of scruffy paperwork seized from the NoW's private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, Murdoch's Management and Standards Committee has now handed them what may be the largest cache of evidence ever gathered by a police operation in this country, including the material that led to Saturday's arrests.

They have access to a mass of internal paperwork – invoices, reporters' expense claims, accounts, bank records, phone records. And technicians have retrieved an enormous reservoir of material from News International's central computer servers, including one particularly vast collection that may yet prove to be the stick that breaks the media mogul's back. It is known as Data Pool 3.

It contains several hundred million emails sent and received over the years by employees of the News of the World – and of the three other Murdoch titles. Data Pool 3 is so big that the police are not even attempting to read every message. Instead, there are two teams searching it for key words: a detective sergeant with five detective constables from Scotland Yard working secretly on criminal leads; and 32 civilians working for the Management and Standards Committee, providing information for the civil actions brought by public figures and for the Leveson inquiry and passing relevant material to police.

For News International, Data Pool 3 is a nightmare. Firstly, no one know what is in there. All they can do is wait and see how bad it gets.

Second, the police clearly believe it may yield new evidence of the crimes they set out to investigate – the "blagging" of confidential data from phone companies, banks, tax offices etc; the interception of voicemails and emails; the payment of bribes to police officers.

Third – and most nightmarish – Data Pool 3 could yield evidence of attempts to destroy evidence the high court and police were seeking. Data Pool 3 itself was apparently deliberately deleted from News International's servers.

If proved, such conduct would be serious because it could see the courts imposing long prison sentences; and because it could have been sanctioned by senior employees and directors.

The Guardian last July revealed police suspicions that a huge number of emails had been deliberately destroyed. Since then, high court hearings have disclosed more detail. Late in 2009, News International decided to delete old email from their servers. This appears to have been a simple piece of electronic housekeeping. However, the plan was not executed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/29/data-pool-3-sun-arrests-murdoch

[Douglas Caddy]

Poster's note: This is truly significant evidence in a future criminal prosecution of James Murdoch.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Phone hacking: email to James Murdoch was deleted

Daily Telegraph

6:30AM GMT 01 Feb 2012

An email in which James Murdoch was told of allegations that phone hacking was “rife” at the News of the World was deleted from his personal account days before Scotland Yard opened a new investigation into the company.

The chairman of News International was forwarded a chain of emails suggesting that hacking was not restricted to a single rogue reporter. They included one from Colin Myler, the editor of the News of the World at the time, after it emerged that a second journalist had sent an email with details of a hacked conversation. He warned Mr Murdoch that “it is as bad as we feared”.

Mr Murdoch claims he did not read the email in full and was unaware of the suggestion that hacking went beyond one “rogue reporter”.

Yesterday, however, it was disclosed that the email was deleted from his account by an IT worker at News International 11 days before Scotland Yard launched Operation Weeting.

Mr Myler’s copy of the message was also lost from the email server that held News International emails following a “hardware failure”. The deletions meant that the email did not form part of the initial evidence sent by News International to the Metropolitan Police.

It was not discovered until last year when a hard copy was found in a box containing material taken from Mr Myler’s office following the closure of the News of the World.

The evidence handed over by News International in January 2011 prompted a new investigation into phone hacking that led to 17 arrests.

Many of the arrests include current or former News International employees who have been arrested on the

strength of emails and evidence handed to police by the company.

Mr Murdoch was sent the email detailing a hacking claim by Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, on June 7, 2008.

Mr Myler describes Mr Taylor’s case against the paper and requests a meeting with Mr Murdoch. The News International chairman replies two minutes later agreeing to the meeting, but has subsequently claimed he had not had time to read the email in full.

Linklaters, a law firm representing News International, has written to the Commons culture, media and sport committee saying that the email was deleted on Jan 15 2011. Operation Weeting began 11 days later.

The deletion is thought to have happened during or shortly after News International’s internal trawl of emails, the results of which were passed to the police.

In a letter to the committee, John Turnbull of Linklaters said: “Mr Murdoch’s copy of the email was deleted from his mailbox by a member of News International’s IT department on Jan 15 2011 as part of [an] email stabilisation and modernisation programme.

“Mr Myler’s copy of the email was lost from the email archive system in a hardware failure that occurred on Mar 18 2010. The email archive system was subject to many such incidents.”

A spokesman for News International declined to comment. In a separate letter to the committee, Mr Murdoch said: “I wish to confirm again that I was not aware of evidence of widespread wrongdoing and did not seek to conceal it.”

Last month, News International was accused of a “cover-up” of phone hacking evidence by a High Court judge after lawyers for phone hacking victims said the company had deleted emails.

Mr Justice Vos told the company he had seen evidence that raised “compelling questions about whether you concealed, told lies, actively tried to get off scot free.”

Statutory regulation of newspapers could stifle free speech, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission told the Leveson Inquiry yesterday.

Lord Hunt of Wirral said many parliamentary colleagues told him they would try to use any new legislation to tame the media. Instead, he suggested a new self-regulatory body with more powers than the PCC that would act as both ombudsman and enforcer whenever newspapers stepped out of line.

The Conservative peer, who became PCC chairman in October, said his 35 years in Parliament had taught him to oppose any attempt at statutory regulation of the media.

Asked if he thought that parliamentarians might seek to use any form of legislation as a way of controlling the press, he replied: “Yes, and they have told me so, many of them, in both Houses.”

[John Dolva]

It is also interesting what they are not saying. That email would have been stored on some media. Possibly more than one harddrive. This makes a proper analysis of that media important. If it exists, if it exists intact even, then the type of deletion could be an important issue.

I once got the task of disposing of a business' hardrive and I was given specific instructions : don't read anything, don't copy anything, crack the entire drive revealing all sectors and making them accessible to (it was running a dual boot with an obscure(today more so) operating system) a 'miltary grade' harddrive wiper with multiple sweeps, followed by a brick, hardrive and sledgehammer sandwich. How far did this deletion and hardware failure go?(re Rupert)

[Douglas Caddy]

Police to investigate alleged email hacking at the Times

MP Tom Watson writes to officers at Operation Tuleta over accusation against News International title

By John Plunkett

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 2 February 2012 03.56 EST

The Metropolitan police is investigating alleged email hacking at the Times, in response to a letter from the Labour MP Tom Watson.

Officers from Operation Tuleta, which is investigating breaches of privacy involving computers, are in contact with the MP in relation to "specific issues" he wishes to raise, Scotland Yard confirmed on Thursday.

Watson wrote to the Met's deputy assistant commissioner, Sue Akers, on 23 January asking the force to investigate allegations of email hacking at the News International paper.

The Met said in a statement: "We can confirm that a letter was received on Monday 23 January, from MP Tom Watson.

"Officers from Operation Tuleta are in contact with Mr Watson in relation to specific issues he wishes to raise. We are not prepared to give a running commentary on the Operation Tuleta investigation."

Watson said on Twitter on Thursday: "The Met police have confirmed to me they are investigating @rupertmurdoch's newspaper The Times over email

[Douglas Caddy]

Times editor recalled to Leveson inquiry

Daily Telegraph

11:50AM GMT 02 Feb 2012

James Harding, the editor of The Times, has been recalled to the Leveson Inquiry following fresh revelations about alleged email hacking at the newspaper.

Mr Harding will appear before the inquiry into press standards for a second time on Tuesday, when he is expected to be asked to clarify how much he and senior executives at News International knew about the hacking of an anonymous police blogger's emails in 2009.

When Mr Harding gave evidence to the inquiry last month he and News International chief executive Tom Mockridge acknowledged that a reporter had admitted hacking an email, but did not name him or give any details about what story it related to.

Following his evidence however The Times published an article naming the reporter as 27-year-old Patrick Foster and confirming he had admitted hacking the email account of Richard Horton, a police officer who blogged under the name of Nightjack.

Mr Horton was outed in 2009 after The Times fought an injunction in the High Court in order to reveal his identity.

Mr Foster was later dismissed from the newspaper for an unrelated matter.

Last week Mr Harding wrote to Leveson Inquiry admitting for the first time that the newspaper had failed to tell the High Court they new about the hacking before challenging the injunction.

News of Mr Harding's recall came as it was confirmed that the police have launched an investigation into the hacking allegations.

The police investigation follows a complaint by Labour MP Tom Watson, who wrote to Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers urging Scotland Yard to look into allegations of hacking.

Mr Watson’s letter to the Metropolitan Police, which was also sent to the Attorney General, said: “It is clear that a crime has been committed – illicit hacking of personal emails.

“A journalist and unnamed managers failed to report the crime to their proprietor or the police. I must ask that you investigate computer hacking at The Times. In so doing you will also be able to establish whether perjury or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice have also occurred.”

A Met spokesman said: "We can confirm that a letter was received on Monday January 23 from MP Tom Watson.

"Officers from Operation Tuleta are in contact with Mr Watson in relation to specific issues he wishes to raise and we are not prepared to give a running commentary on the Tuleta investigation."

The Metropolitan Police set up Operation Tuleta to examine allegations of email hacking by journalists.

The investigation is separate to Operation Weeting which is looking into allegations of phone hacking.

[Douglas Caddy]

Hacking Inquiry Widens to Times of London

By SARAH LYALL and ALAN COWELL

The New York Times

February 2, 2012

LONDON — The hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers took a new turn on Thursday when a lawmaker said police investigations had spread to the flagship Times of London. The revelation came a day after lawyers said an e-mail referring to “a nightmare scenario” of legal repercussions from widespread phone hacking at the News of the World tabloid was deleted from James Murdoch’s computer less than two weeks before the police opened investigations.

The lawmaker, Tom Watson, from the opposition Labour Party, who has been a central figure in the inquiries into phone hacking, said in a message on Twitter that Scotland Yard had “confirmed to me they are investigating” The Times “over e-mail hacking.”

A spokesman for Scotland Yard, who spoke in return for anonymity under departmental rules, said officers investigating hacking were “in contact with Mr. Watson in relation to specific issues he wishes to raise” after he sent the police a letter on Jan. 23. But the spokesman declined to confirm specifically that The Times was under investigation.

News International, the British newspaper arm of the Murdoch media empire, said it had no immediate comment on Mr. Watson’s message.

The development was significant in two regards: it focused attention on e-mail hacking rather than the illicit voice mail interception at the center of inquiries so far, and it suggested that the most august of the Murdoch publications in Britain was not immune from scrutiny.

The case apparently was related to an episode in 2009 when a reporter who has since left The Times of London exposed the identity of a police officer who blogged under the pseudonym Nightjack, according to British news reports.

James Harding, the editor of The Times of London, said in written testimony to a formal inquiry into press conduct last month that “there was an incident where the newsroom was concerned that a reporter had gained unauthorized access to an e-mail account.”

The reporter “was issued with a formal written warning for professional misconduct,” Mr. Harding said.

The incident led to a court case in which the police officer tried and failed to keep his identity secret.

In his letter to Scotland Yard on Jan. 23, Mr. Watson said it was “almost certain that a judge was misled” in that court case and it was “clear that a crime has been committed — illicit hacking of personal e-mails,” The Press Association news agency said.

The hacking scandal has triggered several separate inquiries. Mr. Watson is part of a House of Commons panel, while Mr. Harding testified at a judicial investigation led by Lord Justice Brian Leveson. Scotland Yard is conducting its own criminal investigations into illicit phone and e-mail intercepts and into bribery of the police.

The newest twist came less than 24 hours after Linklaters, a law firm representing News International said the deletion from James Murdoch’s computer was part of an “e-mail stabilization and modernization program” in which accounts were “being prepared for the migration to a new e-mail system.”

The e-mail was a chain of messages sent June 7, 2008, to James Murdoch — Rupert Murdoch’s son who is head of News Corporation’s European and Asian operations — warning that the potential legal fallout from hacking at The News of the World was “as bad as we feared.”

Linklaters disclosed the existence of the e-mail to the House of Commons committee investigating phone hacking in December. Mr. Murdoch said that while he received and answered the e-mail, he did not scroll all the way down through the chain and so did not read everything in it.

The disclosure of the deletion came in a letter from Linklaters to the Commons committee. The letter says that the deletion occurred on Jan. 15, 2011. Operation Weeting, the police inquiry into phone hacking at The News of the World, began 11 days later.

The letter also disclosed that the e-mail’s existence became known only because investigators unearthed a hard copy from a storage crate filled with material left behind last summer when The News of the World was closed.

A News International spokeswoman said the company had no comment and would not discuss what other e-mails might have been deleted at the same time.

The e-mail has become significant in the hacking case as possible evidence of what the younger Mr. Murdoch knew and when he learned it. Two company officials — Tom Crone, then a News International lawyer, and Colin Myler, then the News of the World editor — have said they informed James Murdoch at the time that phone hacking was endemic at the newspaper.

The younger Mr. Murdoch has always maintained that they never told him and that he knew nothing about it until much later.

Three days after the June 7 e-mail, the younger Mr. Murdoch met with Mr. Crone and Mr. Myler and decided to pay more than $1.4 million to settle a hacking lawsuit. The details of the suit were kept secret, and until December 2010, News International maintained that hacking at the newspaper was limited to a “rogue reporter.”

The Linklaters’ letter said the crate in which the hard copy of the e-mail was found “had a sticker on it which suggested the contents were originally held in Mr. Myler’s office.”

Electronic copies were then found in two of Mr. Murdoch’s laptops, and one from an assistant’s desktop computer, Linklaters said. Mr. Myler’s copy, though, was “lost from the e-mail archive system in a hardware failure which occurred on 18 March 2010,” the law firm added.

News International has given varying accounts about what e-mails it has, where they are and why it did not immediately make them available to investigators. At one point, it said that its e-mail archive had been lost on the way to storage in Mumbai, India; at another, it said it could only retrieve e-mails that were less than six months old.

But new intimations that the company may have purposely destroyed evidence are raising questions about whether the company might be investigated for obstruction of justice.

A judge accused News International last month of destroying possibly relevant e-mails. And The Guardian reported Tuesday that the police were examining “an enormous reservoir of material from News International’s central computer services” that was “deliberately deleted from News International’s servers.”

[Douglas Caddy]

Leveson inquiry: Sunday Mirror man denies he would buy medical records

Nick Owens says he was only discussing possible celebrity stories with Starsuckers director in an 'informal' way

By Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Monday 6 February 2012 10.22 EST

A Sunday Mirror journalist has denied to the Leveson inquiry that he was willing to buy celebrities' private medical records, after the person offering information revealed himself as a documentary-maker trying to hoax tabloids into running fake stories.

Nick Owens told the inquiry on Monday he discussed cosmetic surgery stories with Chris Atkins in an "informal" way and when it became apparent he was trying to profit from them he decided he was going to expose him. The Leveson inquiry heard how publishing medical records is a breach of data protection laws.

Owens had detailed face-to-face discussions with Atkins, who went on to make the movie Starsuckers.

Atkins, who was secretly recording the meeting, had phoned the Sunday Mirror claiming he could get documentation on cosmetic surgery through a friend who worked as an "administrative nurse" in a London clinic.

A transcript of the recording read out to the inquiry, and included in Atkins' earlier written witness statement, mentioned stories including "one of Girls Aloud having a boob job; Hugh Grant having a face tuck, Rhys Ifans having a tummy tuck and Guy Ritchie having a chemical peel".

According to the transcript, Owens told Atkins that the Girls Aloud story was potentially "a very, very good story" and if it concerned Cheryl Cole he could expect a big payment.

Owens was quizzed repeatedly about the enthusiasm he showed for the stories, despite admitting that he knew the issues of using private medical records for stories was very "sensitive".

The reporter said he was "just reacting to a string of stories that have just been thrown at me" and that the transcript of a conversation three years ago should not be construed as a willingness to buy private records.

He told counsel of the inquiry, David Barr, that he was "just having a general discussion about what evidence it was he could obtain" and reminded the inquiry that the paper "didn't publish anything at all".

Barr put it to Owens that evidence of a celebrity "breast enlargement" might not have been used in itself, but armed with the inside information, it could be arranged "for the paper to take before and after shots".

Owens replied: "I wasn't suggesting the paper go off and do anything at all and indeed we didn't."

He then told Barr that he "went away [from the meeting with Atkins], thinking that we may need to expose what he was doing".

The reporter said that when the Starsuckers documentary later came out, he admitted in a meeting with his editor, he had said "some unhelpful things".

Earlier, the Leveson inquiry heard from the News of the World's former showbusiness editor Dan Wootton.

Wootton said he did not like doing stories about Hugh Grant because he always seemed "pretty miserable" and he liked to write about celebrities that "like to be written about".

[Douglas Caddy]

Leveson Inquiry: Scotland Yard probing more than 50 data intrusion cases

Daily Telegraph

1:21PM GMT 06 Feb 2012

Police are investigating 57 separate allegations of computing hacking and 'data intrusion' under Operation Tuleta, the Leveson Inquiry heard today.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers told Lord Justice Leveson that officers are probing computer hacking and the 'blagging' of medical records on behalf of newspapers under Operation Tuleta. Some allegations date back to the 1980s and are related to historic Metropolitan Police investigations.

Detectives are conducting a scoping operation to decide whether there is evidence to launch a full investigation.

Ms Akers told the Leveson Inquiry that more than 800 "likely" phone hacking victims had now been identified by the force.

She also told the inquiry that the investigation into alleged phone hacking - one of three major probes into alleged illegal activity - is approaching the "finishing line".

Operation Weeting began last January after Scotland Yard received "significant" information from News International - publishers of the now-axed News of the World - relating to the interception of voicemails.

Ms Akers, who is overseeing all three probes, indicated that Operation Weeting was coming to a close.

She said: "We have a number of key witnesses that we will want to see and that process is ongoing now. It will take a few more months."

Questioning her, Robert Jay QC asked her: "You're probably nearer to the finishing line than the starting gun, is that right?" She answered: "I'd like to think so, yes."

The deputy assistant commissioner said 6,349 potential victims of phone hacking have been identified by name so far. The telephone numbers of 4,375 of them have been found in documents belonging to private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

She told the inquiry, sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, that so far Operation Weeting had identified 829 "likely" victims - 581 have been contacted, 231 could not be contacted and 17 have not been contacted for "operational reasons", she said.

"We have defined likely victims as those that have details around their names that would make it suggest to us that they had either been hacked or had the potential to be hacked," Ms Akers said.

A total of 17 people have been arrested so far as part of Operation Weeting. No further action is being taken against two, with the remaining 15 currently on bail.

Ms Akers said there are 90 people working on the operation, including 35 tasked with working with the victims.

A total of 300 million emails that were originally thought to be lost have now been recovered and are being examined, Ms Akers said.

She is also overseeing Operation Elveden, looking into allegations that NI journalists made "inappropriate" payments to police.

She revealed the number of Scotland Yard officers assigned to the operation is set to increase.

"We have 40 police officers and staff but we are going to grow the team to take account of the fact that we moved last weekend into an investigation into The Sun, or journalists within The Sun." There will eventually be 61 officers working on the operation, she said.

Asked about the progress made so far, Ms Akers replied: "I am less confident in saying that we are near the end than the beginning of Elveden than I was when I made that comment about Weeting."

The Met has faced heavy criticism over the phone-hacking saga which intensified after it failed to reopen inquiries in 2009 amid allegations that thousands of mobiles were intercepted by journalists at the former Sunday tabloid.

Two of its most senior officers sensationally resigned over the scandal.

Then commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson made his shock announcement after coming under fire for hiring former News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis and accepting free accommodation at a luxury health spa worth thousands of pounds.

Assistant commissioner John Yates handed in his notice the next day following a furore over his handling of a review of the initial hacking probe.

A series of high-profile figures have been arrested in connection with police investigations, including former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and ex-Downing Street communications chief Andy Coulson.

Dan Wootton, former showbiz editor at the now-defunct News of the World, said when he joined the newspaper in February 2007, it was made "absolutely clear" that illegal activity would not be tolerated.

"When I joined, obviously it was after Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire had gone to jail, but myself and the rest of the staff were assured that that was an individual case," he told the inquiry.

"I guess the main thing that was most important to me was that when I started it was made absolutely clear that that sort of behaviour would not be tolerated in any way under (then editor) Colin Myler."

Mr Wootton said every story, no matter how trivial, would be read by at least four people before it was published.

He said he got stories from celebrities themselves, their public representatives, agents, sometimes friends and family, but had never hacked phones.

"I worked tirelessly to build up these contacts and to gain their trust," he said.

"I have never hacked a phone, nor done anything illegal in the sourcing of my stories, and there has never been any suggestion that I am implicated in the wrongdoing at the News of the World."

He said he always gave the subjects of his stories a right of reply - although sometimes the decision was taken above him not to, as it could jeopardise the story.

"There is a need to protect exclusives so, even though I was a big believer in right of reply, in a small number of cases a decision would be taken above me - for commercial reasons usually - that it wasn't the right decision to give a right of reply, because there was a risk."

Mr Wootton said if stories were provided to him by freelancers, he made sure they could be verified through valid sources.

He said there were some areas where celebrities' privacy should be maintained, including sexuality, pregnancies, health matters, and issues involving their children or family.

But he added: "The majority of the celebrities that I would write about were more than happy to be covered because they accepted it was part of the job and they loved their job."

Mr Wootton, who now does work for the Daily Mail as well as a magazine and a TV show, said he was concerned by a suggestion he said actor Hugh Grant had told the inquiry that his American-based publicists had a blanket policy not to respond if newspapers gave them a right of reply.

"I do believe a right of reply really should go both ways," he said.

"If a newspaper is giving you the courtesy of a right of reply why should there be a blanket decision never to respond?

"I often think it needs to be a two-way street."

Sunday Mirror journalist Nick Owens also faced the inquiry today, and denied going on a "fishing expedition" for stories about celebrities undergoing cosmetic surgery.

Mr Owens had a meeting with Chris Atkins, the director of documentary Starsuckers, in which he was told of a fictional contact at a clinic who could provide details about confidential medical information.

The 2009 film planted invented celebrity stories in tabloid papers, Mr Atkins has previously told the inquiry.

Mr Owens was told he could have access to information on cosmetic work undergone by high-profile celebrities, and discussed payment and a confidentiality agreement with Mr Atkins, the inquiry was told.

David Barr, counsel to the inquiry, asked Mr Owens: "Doesn't this amount to a fishing expedition?"

The tabloid reporter replied: "I wouldn't say it was a fishing expedition. It was just a meeting in this very informal environment between two people to see whether there would be anything at the end of it that we would want to get involved in publishing."

He was then asked by Mr Barr: "The nub of it is that you expressed an interest in having confidential medical records and if you couldn't have those, you would settle for simply being told who had had what surgery?"

Mr Owens replied: "I don't believe that this is the case. What I was trying to get clear in my mind was the information, the evidence this guy had."

He said he did not persevere with the story after the meeting because he was concerned that Mr Atkins told him he would get his contact drunk in order to get information from her.

Mr Owens did not mention his discussions with Mr Atkins to his newsdesk and they did not find out about it until Starsuckers was released.

The Sunday Mirror's editor, Tina Weaver, then called Mr Owens into a meeting and told him he had "acted unwisely and made misjudgments", the inquiry was told.

[Douglas Caddy]

Mail's "Private Eye" may have used criminal methods

Editor says paper hired convicted investigator hundreds of times to get personal information

By Ian Burrell

The Independenbt

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

Paul Dacre, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, yesterday conceded that a private detective the paper commissioned hundreds of times may have been engaging in criminal activity.

Challenged at the Leveson Inquiry into media standards over the paper's prolonged use of Steve Whittamore to obtain personal information, Mr Dacre said: "There was a prima facie case that Whittamore could have been acting illegally." But he said there was no evidence that the newspaper's journalists had broken the law in commissioning the detective.

The editor had been invited by Lord Justice Leveson to consult a lawyer before responding to further questioning over the paper's use of Whittamore, who was convicted of data protection offences in 2005 after the Operation Motorman inquiry.

Lord Justice Leveson told the hearing he was not convinced that all the illicit searches were in the public interest: "It seems to me that it's extremely difficult to justify some of the requests that were made."

Robert Jay, QC, counsel to the Leveson Inquiry, told the hearing that the Motorman files showed that the Mail had paid £500 for the details of 10 "friends and family" numbers of the subject of one of its stories. Mr Dacre argued that such searches were necessary to "corroborate" news stories.

During three-and-a-half hours of evidence, Mr Dacre was forced to listen to repeated criticisms of his newspaper. He was most clearly offended when Mr Jay suggested that the Daily Mail had only campaigned for the family of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence because the victim's father had once done plastering work at the editor's house.

"Are you really telling me that I would risk going to jail, risk destroying my career, I would put my proprietor and my paper in that position, and that I couldn't take a principled stand against something I felt very strongly, and that was only because this man at some stage many years previously had done some plastering work for me?" Mr Dacre asked. "I really do find that insulting."

Angered by a line of questioning he at one point denounced as "preposterous", Mr Dacre was obliged to defend his paper and "a company I love" over repeated attacks on its journalistic standards. Answering criticisms of his columnist Jan Moir's piece on the death of the singer Stephen Gately, he said: "I think the piece, the column, could have benefited from a little judicious sub-editing." But he maintained that "there is not a homophobic bone in Jan Moir's body".

He also stood by his organisation for accusing Hugh Grant of a "mendacious smear" after the actor told Lord Justice Leveson that the Mail and the Mail on Sunday had been involved in phone hacking. "I have never placed a story in the Daily Mail as a result of phone hacking, that I know came from phone hacking," he said.

Earlier in his evidence, Mr Dacre called for a new system of accrediting journalists; he said they should run the risk of having their press cards removed in the way that doctors are subject to being struck off by the General Medical Council. "I do believe there is an opportunity to build on the existing haphazard press card system," he said. "There are 17 bodies at the moment providing these cards. By transforming it into an essential kitemark for ethical and proper journalism, the key would be to make the cards available only to members of print newsgathering organisations or magazines who have signed up to the new body and its code."

Mr Dacre suggested that journalists not carrying such a card would be barred from covering events such as key government briefings or interviews relating to sporting fixtures. "The public at large would know the journalists carrying such cards are bona fide operators, committed to a set of standards and a body to whom complaints can be made."

He also argued that there should be a new self-regulatory body, standing alongside the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), to deal with press standards.

Edited February 7, 2012 by Douglas Caddy

[Douglas Caddy]

Met Police admits hacking failure was 'unlawful'

Daily Telegraph

12:11PM GMT 07 Feb 2012

The Metropolitan Police Service today accepted at the High Court that its failure in 2006 and 2007 to warn victims of phone hacking by the News of the World was unlawful. News of the acceptance that it had ''breached a legal obligation'' came as two judges in London heard that a number of claimants - including former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott - had settled judicial review proceedings brought against the Met over ''failures to warn victims''.

Lord Justice Gross and Mr Justice Irwin were told that the two sides had reached agreement by Hugh Tomlinson QC, representing Lord Prescott, ex Met Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick, actor Jude Law's personal assistant Ben Jackson, MP Chris Bryant and an anonymous individual known as HJK.

Mr Tomlinson said the claimants and the Met had agreed a ''declaration'' - in which the Met admits it breached its duties under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Lord Prescott was in court for the proceedings.

Law firm Bindmans, for the claimants, said in a statement that the declaration "constitutes an admission by the police that their failure to warn victims that their privacy was or may have been unlawfully invaded was a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights".

That article provides that "everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence".

Lord Prescott said in a statement: "It's taken me 19 months to finally get justice.

"Time and time again I was told by the Metropolitan Police that I had not been targeted by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World.

"But I refused to accept this was the case. Thanks to this judicial review, the Metropolitan Police has finally apologised for its failure to inform victims of the criminal acts committed by the News of the World against myself and hundreds of other victims of phone hacking."

The Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement: "The MPS is pleased to have reached an agreement in this case and accepts more should have been done by police in relation to those identified as victims and potential victims of phone hacking several years ago.

"It is a matter of public record that the unprecedented increase in anti-terrorist investigations resulted in the parameters of the original inquiry being tightly drawn and officers considered the prosecution and conviction of Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire as a successful outcome of their investigation.

"There are now more than 130 officers involved in the current phone-hacking inquiry (Weeting) and the two operations being run in conjunction with it, and this in part reflects the lessons that have been learned about how police should deal with the victims of such crimes.

"Today's settlement does not entail damages being paid by the MPS and, as the court has made clear, sets no precedent for the future.

"How the MPS treats victims goes to the very heart of what we do. It was important that this case did not result in such a wide duty being placed on police officers that it could direct them away from their core purpose of preventing and detecting crime.

"All the claimants are receiving personal apologies from the MPS."

MP Chris Bryant said: "I am delighted that the Metropolitan Police are finally admitting that they should have notified not just me but all the thousands of victims of the News of the World's criminality."

He said: "It's a sadness that it has taken all this time to get the Met to admit that they should have notified all the victims - and that we had to go to court to secure that admission."

The claimants' solicitor, Tamsin Allen, of Bindmans, said that at the time of the first investigation into phone hacking, "instead of warning the hundreds or thousands of victims of voicemail interceptions, the police made misleading statements which gave comfort to News International and permitted the cover-up to continue".

She added: "If the police had complied with their obligations under the Human Rights Act in the first place, the history of the phone-hacking scandal would have been very different."

Bindmans said the judicial review was launched in September 2010 and the claim was then "vigorously defended" by the Met.

In a statement it said that "following the new police investigation into phone hacking, and revelations about the evidence in the hands of the police at the time of the first investigation, the police have finally accepted that they breached a legal obligation to warn the phone-hacking victims".

In separate proceedings brought at the High Court by a number of well-known people against News International subsidiary News Group Newspapers, publisher of the now defunct News of the World, Lord Prescott and Mr Bryant accepted £40,000 and £30,000 respectively.

Ben Jackson has accepted £40,000 and HJK £60,

[Douglas Caddy]

U.S. authorities looking into Murdoch foreign payments

Reuters

By Mark Hosenball and Georgina Prodhan

LONDON | Tue Feb 7, 2012 11:00am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. authorities are stepping up investigations, including an FBI criminal inquiry, into possible violations by employees of Rupert Murdoch's media empire of a U.S. law banning corrupt payments to foreign officials such as police, law enforcement and corporate sources said.

But U.S. investigators have found little to substantiate allegations of phone hacking inside the United States by Murdoch journalists, the sources added.

The FBI is conducting an investigation into possible criminal violations by Murdoch employees of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), a law intended to curb payment of bribes by U.S. companies to foreign officials, a U.S. law enforcement official said.

The U.S. official said that if any law enforcement action was pursued by U.S. authorities against Murdoch employees, it would most likely relate to FCPA.

If it is found to have violated the FCPA, Murdoch's News Corp, which has its headquarters in New York, could be fined up to $2 million and barred from U.S. government contracts, and individuals who participated in the bribery could face fines of up to $100,000 and a jail sentence of five years.

Executives could be liable if they authorized bribes or knew about the practice but failed to stop it.

In practice, U.S. authorities have usually settled FCPA cases in return for large cash payments from companies, who can sometimes avoid legal admissions of guilt.

Much of the evidence police are examining in the News Corp case was handed over to investigators by the company, who have set up a special clean-up unit in London and hired batteries of lawyers in Britain and the United States, some of whom specialize in FCPA cases, company sources said.

The U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission also have jurisdiction to pursue civil cases against alleged violators of the law.

Bloomberg news service reported last year that Justice Department prosecutors sent News Corp, U.S. parent of Murdoch's UK media properties, a request for information on alleged payments which journalists made to British police officers in return for news tips.

LAWYERS

Sources close to News Corp said the Management and Standards Committee (MSC), the unit which the company set up to deal with phone hacking and related investigations, for some time had been concerned about the consequences of U.S. investigations of possible FCPA violations.

Both News International and parent company News Corp declined to comment. Reuters is a competitor of Dow Jones Newswires, a unit of News Corp.

Last July, the company retained Mark Mendelsohn, who served as deputy chief of the Fraud Section in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Justice Department. Mendelsohn, now in private practice, was internationally respected as an architect of the DOJ's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement program.

News Corp sources confirmed that the Management and Standards Committee was also working with Williams & Connolly, a prominent Washington law firm specializing in white-collar crime cases.

The New York Times reported last year that one of the lawyers working on the News Corp case was Brendan Sullivan, a Williams & Connolly partner known for his public defense of White House aide Oliver North during Congressional investigations into an arms-for-hostages scandal during the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

News Corp announced last month that another Williams & Connolly partner, Gerson Zweifach, would become its top new in-house lawyer. He is also expected to join the Management and Standards Committee.

Company sources said that, via the MSC, News International was routinely sharing with its outside lawyers, including Williams & Connolly, evidence which had been uncovered of suspected questionable practices including payments to British police officers.

The MSC declined to comment.

Among evidence turned over by the company to British authorities are emails and financial records which allegedly chart the payment of more than 100,000 pounds ($158,000) to police contacts, mostly in sums of under 1,000 pounds.

A company source said the records showed many or most of the payments intended recipients were listed in company records under false names.

THREE INVESTIGATIONS

London's Metropolitan Police Service for months has been investigating an assortment of suspected abusive practices which journalists at the News of the World and other Murdoch London newspaper properties are alleged to have routinely employed in recent years.

British detectives are conducting three parallel investigations.

One inquiry, known as Operation Weeting, is investigating alleged phone hacking, and a second inquiry, Operation Tuleta, is investigating allegations of computer hacking. The third investigation, Operation Elveden, is investigating allegations that journalists paid police officers bribes in return for story tipoffs. The head of the three investigations said this week she was increasing the number of police looking at police payments.

The law enforcement source said U.S. authorities found no evidence to substantiate allegations that potentially illegal reporting tactics that were alleged to have been widespread in Britain were also employed by Murdoch journalists in the United States.

Law enforcement and corporate sources said no evidence had turned up to corroborate a Daily Mirror accusation that journalists from Murdoch's now defunct News of the World sought to hack into voice mail messages of victims of the al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington of September 11, 2001. The Mirror is a competitor of Murdoch's London tabloid, the Sun.

London police have arrested 30 people, including journalists and police officers, in connection with its three journalism-related investigations. Last month, four current and former journalists on the Sun, the largest-circulation British paper, as well as a serving police officer were arrested in connection with Operation Elveden.

Sue Akers, the officer in charge of all the investigations, said on Monday that 14 people so far had been arrested in connection with Operation Elveden, but indicated that more investigators were likely to be added to the inquiry, which she said still had some time to run.

To date, no criminal charges have been filed against any of the individuals arrested over the past year, who include Rebekah Brooks, a former CEO of Murdoch's London papers, and Andy Coulson, a former Murdoch editor who became top media adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron.

However, current investigations trace their roots back to the 2006 arrests, and subsequent guilty pleas, of News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire on phone hacking charges. ($1 = 0.6331 British pounds)

(Additional reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Alison Williams)

(This story corrects name of clean-up committee to “Management and Standards Committee” from “Management Standards Committee” throughout; removes words “of News International” in 11th paragraph to make clear the body is part of News Corp, not News International)