Exclusive: Murdoch execs told of hacking evidence in 2006

[kpete]

Source: Independent UK

Exclusive: Murdoch execs told of hacking evidence in 2006
Police warned Rebekah Brooks that hacking was likely to be in wider use
By James Cusick and Cahal Milmo
Thursday, 22 September 2011

Up to a dozen News International executives, including Rebekah Brooks, were told in 2006 that the Metropolitan Police had evidence that more than one News of the World journalist was implicated in the phone-hacking scandal.

New information obtained by The Independent challenges the timetable, as publicly stated by Rupert Murdoch's newspaper group, of when and how it first became aware of the extent of illegality at the now-defunct Sunday tabloid. Senior figures from NI have repeatedly stated to Parliament that the company had no significant evidence until 2008 that illegal voicemail interception went beyond the NOTW's jailed royal editor, Clive Goodman.

The new evidence, which is likely to be central to the investigations into the Murdoch empire, reveals that police informed the company two years earlier that they had uncovered strong "circumstantial evidence" implicating other journalists. A senior police officer held a meeting with Ms Brooks in the weeks after the arrest in August 2006 of Mr Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

The officer who met Ms Brooks – a former editor of the NOTW who at the time was editing The Sun – told her that detectives sifting through a vast cache of documents seized from Mulcaire's south London home had uncovered evidence that Goodman was not the only individual on the paper involved in criminal activity. Information was disclosed about the nature of that evidence

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/exclusive-murdoch-execs-told-of-hacking-evidence-in-2006-2358777.html

[Kingofalldems]

1. K and R all Murdoch scandal threads

This is huge.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Given the "evidence"

the only question of importance here is why didn't the police bring charges at that time.

In case it hasn't dawned on anyone here - either the Independent or their police leak will now have to substantiate this at the enquiry which puts the issue the same boat as the issue with the Guardian journalists and their grass. At the enquiry there won't be time to claim human rights issues - could be a straight forward lock up job if they refuse to answer.

[beac]

3. SO the Murdochs, Brooks, et al are craven liars? Least surprising news of 2011.

Horrible human beings, horrible ethics, horrible business practices.