We've got your little sick boy's medical records, Sun boss Rebekah Brooks told Gordon Brown

[deminks]

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/weve-got-your-little-sick-boys-medical-records-sun-boss-rebekah-brooks-told-gordon-brown-16022189.html

Rupert Murdoch's bid to takeover BSkyB is in deep crisis after it emerged The Sun, under the editorship of beleaguered Rebekah Brooks had obtained the medical records of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ill son.

(snip)

In another case, in October 2006, Rebekah Brooks, then editor of The Sun, contacted the Browns, informing them that she had obtained medical details about their four-year-old son, Fraser. The Sun subsequently published a story stating that Fraser had cystic fibrosis.

Friends of the Browns said Ms Brooks' call caused them considerable distress, as they were seeking to come to terms with the diagnosis, which had not been confirmed. Police are thought to have evidence that the News of the World's private investigator Glenn Mulcaire had targeted Mr Brown and his wife, Sarah. In a statement, the Browns said: “We are shocked by the scale of law-breaking and intrusion into our |private lives.” News International — whose chief executive is Ms Brooks — said it would investigate the allegations. The targeting of Mr Brown came as emails indicated that the NotW had been bribing a Royal Protection Squad officer for personal details about the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, are also understood to have been informed by the new Metropolitan Police inquiry into phone hacking, Operation Weeting, they too may have been targeted by Mulcaire.

(end snip)

So, Brooks herself called the Browns with the story.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Completing an awful day blah blah

the Government reversed its strong support for the tycoon's £9bn bid for BSkyB ?

That is a distortion of what actually happened. Murdoch withdrew his offer to divest News Corp of Sky News. As soon as he did that the government had no choice other than to refer the takeover to the monopolies commission. Murdoch had done that to purposely lengthen the period before the bid could be allowed to proceed or not so by about a year.

[PoliticAverse]

2. Wow. n/t

[aquart]

3. In the US, Murdoch has been more interested in power than gossip.

And Fox is endlessly political.

My question is, when and how will we find out that Fox hacks Congressional Blackberries? Has there been anything we scratched our heads over that they should not have known, or was knowledge used solely for blackmail?

[deminks]

4. I remember feeling during the entire Bush misadministration that someone

had something on the congress critters. Their lack of backbone was and is still stunning. Now I wonder in part if it has something to do with Murdoch.

I find I am running over stories in my mind, like how did Fox Noise show up at a young girl's house before the police arrived investigating Anthony Weiner's tweets.

and who is funding Breitbart et al?

These practices were pervasive, and now reaching into other Murdoch papers.

The questions are beginning to come. We need to keep up the pressure.

[leveymg]

7. Roger Ailes was Bush, Sr.'s media guru. He continued to assist Dubya. After 9/11 he told Dubya:

From page 207 of Woodward's book, Bush at War: http://www.slate.com/id/2074115/

"Rove also kept in touch with the party apparatus and leading conservatives. One important-looking confidential communication came in to Rove from one of Bush's senior friends, so Bush took it to the Oval Office.

"Roger Ailes, former media guru for Bush's father, had a message, Rove told the president. It had to be confidential because Ailes, a flamboyant and irreverent media executive, was currently the head of FOX News, the conservative-leaning television cable network that was enjoying high ratings. In that position, Ailes was not supposed to be giving political advice. His back-channel message: The American public would tolerate waiting and would be patient, but only as long as they were convinced that Bush was using the harshest measures possible. Support would dissipate if the public did not see Bush acting harshly."

Ailes has been part of the GOP media mash going back to Nixon, when he worked with Rove and other dirty tricks operatives out of the basement of the White House: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1322885

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/07/in-the-nix...

In the 'Nixon papers:' Young Karl Rove; Roger Ailes; Nixon's media strategy

• A Feb. 15, 1973, letter and accompanying document from Karl Rove (now President Bush's top strategist) to Anne Armstrong, counselor to the president, thanking her for meeting with him and laying out his suggestions for a "1974 election program." That prescription focused on "new federalism," or the scaling back of the federal government and shifting of authority back to the states.

• The document that also got Smoking Gun's attention -- a May 4, 1970 memo from Roger Ailes (who at the time was a consultant and would later rise to be the force behind Fox News Channel) to Haldeman. Ailes critiques some of the president's TV appearances, the coverage they were given and the White House's work in staging them.

At one point, Ailes writes about some technical glitches during a presidential appearance and says:

I can keep this from happening in the future, however, as you know, I am walking a very fine line on how much I can actually say to the networks without creating a situation where they scream "management of news..."

[aquart]

11. We don't know nearly enough about Anne Armstrong .

It was her ranch party where Cheney shot the lawyer.

[theHandpuppet]

8. I agree.

The barn door has been flung open -- let those horses run free. Let's find out the whole truth!

[Mimosa]

9. ^ Good points. ^

Murdoch, Ailes, are SCUM.

[leveymg]

5. Word that comes to mind here is Espionage by Murdoch's organization.

Espionage. This was part of Murdoch's concerted attempt to blackmail Blair, Brown, Straw and others. This wasn't just about digging up embarrassing details about one politician's sick child.

MI-5 - are you still there? You guys must have picked up on this . . . if you did, but this sort of thing continued, there's a problem. If you didn't, there's another, perhaps more serious problem . . .

News International papers targeted Gordon Brown

Journalists from across News International repeatedly targeted the former prime minister Gordon Brown, attempting to access his voicemail and obtaining information from his bank account and legal file as well as his family's medical records.

There is also evidence that a private investigator used a serving police officer to trawl the police national computer for information about him. That investigator also targeted another Labour MP who was the subject of hostile inquiries by the News of the World, but it is not confirmed whether News International was specifically involved in trawling police computers for information on Brown.

snip

Brown joins a long list of Labour politicians who are known to have been targeted by private investigators working for News International, including the former prime minister Tony Blair and his media adviser Alastair Campbell, the former deputy prime minister John Prescott and his political adviser Joan Hammell, Peter Mandelson as trade secretary, Jack Straw and David Blunkett as home secretaries, Tessa Jowell as media secretary and her special adviser Bill Bush, and Chris Bryant as minister for Europe.

The sheer scale of the data assault on Brown is unusual, with evidence of attempts to obtain his legal, financial, tax, medical and police records as well as to listen to his voicemail. All of these incidents are linked to media organisations. In many cases, there is evidence of a link to News International.

link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/11/phone-hacking-news-international-gordon-brown

[Aerows]

13. That's exactly what it is

And I would be shocked if we *didn't* find out it has been done all over the world, including here in the US.

If Brooks called Brown herself, then she's implicated herself in the whole mess, along with News International.

Murdoch may have finally pissed off one too many powerful people.

[deminks]

6. This story may have been served up with a threat to Brown as well.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/jul/12/phone-hacking-scandal-live-coverage

Are you insufficiently repulsed by the Sun's mysteriously-obtained exclusive on Brown's son's cystic fibrosis? Don't worry - like everything about the hacking scandal, there are always more details to emerge to compound the horror. I've been speaking to a source close to Gordon Brown at the time of the story, who recalls that it was served up with a chaser of threat.

Gordon insisted - despite a heavy brow-beating from Rebekah - that he was not willing to let his son's medical condition be the stuff of a Sun exclusive," recalls this source. "So he put out a statement on PA to spike their scoop and make clear that despite his condition, Fraser was fit and healthy. The Sun were utterly furious, and Brown's communications team were told that if Gordon wanted to get into No10, he needed to learn that was not how things were done."

(end snip)

[Aerows]

14. Whoa

That's bad.

[Ganja Ninja]

10. “We are shocked by the scale"

So am I. Seems like an awful lot of information on an awful lot of people for just a few people hacking away in a cubical somewhere. Almost makes you wonder if they may have had some more professional help from a larger, better equipped and more sophisticated outfit like say the NSA or CIA.

[blm]

15. No doubt this is why Clintons took their turn to the right...this stuff has been going on

for decades. BushInc was blackmailing even other Republicans during Nixon's term. They use their control of media to dangle meaningless scandals as distraction for their fascist moves on this nation and the world.

[leveymg]

17. Definitely as far back as Nixon. The "townhouse operation" was part of that, as was the

Shackley-Wilson "rogue CIA." Blackmail, bribery, extortion, murder, terrorism - all of it was part of the package, and Bush, Sr was at or near the top of the pyramid.

I have no doubt the Clintons were compromised during the Mena, Arkansas days, if not willingly recruited earlier at Harvard Law School.

[leveymg]

16. Not the official NSA or CIA - private contractors, "retirees", and foreign intel agencies

The NSA and CIA are government agencies, and run as such. Everything has to be documented. Not much gets done within the normal command structure that isn't known by the higher-ups.

Officers can get into serious trouble by carrying out unapproved "off-the-books" operations. Not to say it doesn't happen, particularly at the very top -- and people have made themselves vast fortunes, mostly through insider knowledge -- but most of the really messy stuff is privatized or shared out with cooperating foreign agencies, and that's been the way it has been since at least the Bush, Sr. DCI period. In 1975-76, G.H.W. entered into the Safari Club deal with Saudis and leadership elements of intel. agencies of France and several other countries to do the things that the U.S. Congress had banned after the Church Committee disclosures. That deal resulted in BCCI, Iran-Contra, the Pakistani nuclear program, the creation of al-Qaeda, and a host of other recurring problems that are still with us.

Murdoch's propaganda, political influence buying, and spying operation is just one side of this tangled web.

[somone]

12. Put them in jail