Phone hacking victims could number 4,000, says senior detective

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

Source: The Guardian UK

The senior detective leading the phone hacking inquiry said on Thursday that there were 4,000 possible victims of phone hacking listed in the pages of private eye Glenn Muclaire's notebooks and they were being contacted "as quickly as possible".

Deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, who is running Operation Weeting, broke her silence to give more details on her operation as the number of victims being publicly identified continued to grow.

Her words are the first official confirmation of what the Guardian reported two years ago – that thousands of people were listed as possible victims in the notebooks of Mulcaire, who was hired by the News of the World. These individuals were not contacted by detectives investigating phone hacking in the first inquiry, known as the Goodman inquiry. The Guardian's original story in 2009 suggested that between 2,000 and 3,000 individuals might have been the victims of phone hacking.

The suggestions that there were possibly thousands of victims was dismissed at the time. Assistant commissioner John Yates said, after reviewing the first inquiry, that there were "hundreds, not thousands" of potential victims. But he appeared only to be referring to victims who had been targeted by the News of the World's former royal reporter Clive Goodman, rather than the full list of victims in the Mulcaire notebooks.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/07/phone-hacking-victims-thousands-sue-akers

---

Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire may have targeted thousands for phone hacking, according to the Metropolitan police investigation, confirming a Guardian story from 2009. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA

[Arctic Dave]

1. The headline I want to read is, "Yes, we showed the Yanks how to do it too".

Then have the AG fire all guns at Fox news.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

2. I wish I were as optimistic about or Justice Department as you are. I'm not trying to

sound like a smart ass. I'm just not impressed so far.

[lark]

3. Murdoch is not a Democrat

so obviously Holder can't go after him.

Pure sickening. I'm really getting close to hating Obama, he's one of the biggest disappointments of my life.