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NY TimesThe focus on Rupert Murdoch’s senior executives in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal intensified on Monday as his former right-hand man was questioned by lawmakers, and his son James was summoned to give further testimony next month.
Les Hinton, who had worked with Mr. Murdoch for more than five decades, remained inscrutable on Monday in the face of often incredulous questioning from a parliamentary committee concerning his time as chairman of News International, the British newspaper unit of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation media empire, which Mr. Hinton ran from 1995 to 2007.
Sixteen former employees of The News of the World, the News International-owned tabloid at the center of the scandal, have been arrested this year. The company shut down the newspaper this summer after a series of revelations that phone hacking — breaking in to the private voice mail accounts of people in the news — was widespread while Mr. Hinton ran the company, possibly touching thousands of unwitting targets.
Mr. Hinton, who appeared before the committee by way of a video link from the United States, told the lawmakers that he still felt he was right to say, at a previous appearance in 2009, that phone hacking was restricted to a single “rogue” reporter, Clive Goodman, who was jailed for the practice in 2007. It has since emerged that Mr. Goodman sent Mr. Hinton a letter that year reporting a much wider problem. “I don’t think I’d regard Mr. Goodman’s letter as evidence of anything,” Mr. Hinton said on Monday. “They were accusations and allegations.” He said that he had not been questioned by the British police or by anyone within News Corporation over his role in the matter, and denied any wrongdoing.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/world/europe/les-hinton-ex-murdoch-executive-questioned-about-news-of-the-world.html
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