Announcing his resignation, Stephenson admitted he was doing so
because of the speculation relating to the Met's links with News
International, but also "in particular in relation to Mr Neil Wallis",
the former News International executive who was arrested last Thursday,
and who it then emerged had worked for the Met.

The Guardian was
also preparing to publish a story about how Scotland Yard chiefs
invited Wallis to apply for a senior communications post with the force,
a decision which Stephenson was aware of.

Stephenson dated his
relationship to Wallis back to 2006, a meeting that took place in the
context of the latter's work as a journalist.

From October 2009 to
September 2010, Wallis's part-time work at the Met involved strategic
communications, advising the commissioner and the assistant
commissioner, John Yates, as the force said there was no need to reopen
the criminal investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/17/sir-paul-stephenson-spa-break-triggered-downfall

News Corp share slide almost 6% on phone hacking arrest

News Corp. also is grappling with legal challenges on the U.S. side
of the Atlantic. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing whether
the phones of 9/11 victims or their families were hacked into by any
News Corp. publication, according to people familiar with the
investigation.

The FBI probe was opened following a request by Rep. Peter King (R.,
N.Y.), who heads the House Homeland Security Committee and whose Long
Island district was home to many victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Several other members of congress had been vocal on the issue.

Casting some doubt over the claims, however, is the newspaper article
they originated in. The Daily Mirror, a British paper, quoted an
anonymous source saying an unidentified private investigator had been
approached by unnamed journalists to provide phone numbers of the
victims and details of the calls they had made and received in the days
leading up to the terrorist attack. The article said the investigator
refused the commission, however. The Daily Mirror did not provide
evidence for its claims and did not revisit them in its coverage on
Friday. The story so far has not been substantiated by other news
outlets.

The Daily Mirror reporter who wrote the story and a spokesperson for the paper could not be reached for comment.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303661904576452452790629220.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

King is scum of the earth. Maybe there is God afteral if he is dirty enough to ask for money in exchange for kangaroo hearing. But then again, he doesn't sound too bright on various press meeting. oh well ...

The contagion affecting News Corp has spread rapidly in the US. The FBI is investigating potential criminal hacking of the voicemails of victims of the 9/11 attacks.
Lawmakers and grassroots groups are also calling for an investigation
into whether the bribing of police was a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
As News Corp is a US corporation, registered in the business-friendly
state of Delaware,even bribery abroad could lead to felony charges in
the US.

One likely consequence would be what Corporate Crime
Reporter's Russell Mokhiber calls "a wishy-washy non-prosecution
settlement" wherein News Corp would admit to the crime without being
convicted, and pay a financial settlement. Mokhiber noted that, in a
2008 FCPA case against Siemens for widespread bribery, Siemens paid
$800m but avoided a criminal conviction that would have jeopardised its
standing as a US defence contractor.

As for the alleged phone
hacking of 9/11 victims, if News of the World employees did engage in
illegal attempts to access voicemails, and the FBI investigation can
ferret out sufficient proof to seek indictments, then the most likely
outcome would be extradition requests against the alleged offenders,
which could drag on for years.

Meanwhile Murdoch runs his media
empire in the US as an unvarnished political operation. Fox News
Channel, run by career Republican operative Roger Ailes, is home to the
most consistently vitriolic critics of Barack Obama. Leaked memos and
emails from Fox vice-president of News, John Moody, and Washington
managing editor Bill Sammon allegedly offer evidence of top-down
directives to control the message throughout the news day, from linking
Obama to Marxism and socialism, to denigrating a public option in the US
healthcare debate, to promoting scepticism about climate change.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/17/murdoch-phone-hacking-america-news-corp?CMP=twt_gu

Only one question remains: are American law enforcement officials and
legislators as afraid of Rupert Murdoch as the Brits’ guardians of the
public trust seem to have been for years? Between Byron Williams, George Tiller, and Van Jones, isn’t there now reason to look into the Brain Room and see what’s been concocted there? Will someone please accelerate their investigation, if only to shut down the likely full-time document shredding happening in the Brain Room right this very minute?

http://firedoglake.com/2011/07/17/sunday-late-night-did-roger-ailes-wiretap-in-the-us/

VERY AFRAID.

Sunday Late Night: Did Roger Ailes Wiretap in the US?

A friend of mine and reader sent this to me based on his own experience with News Corp. Reprinted with permission.

The cancer metaphor is important because, like any multinational
corporation, it has an integrated production system. In the case of the
newspapers at News Corp, roughly 150 newspapers share a single platform.
There is very deep intermingling between newspapers brands, within
locations such as Wapping, the news factory for News of The World (and
The Sun, The Times etc) and between geographic locations.

Economies of scale in newspaper production drove the consolidation of
newspaper production on a single platform, and the need to syndicate
finished stories and rapidly share leads and editorial processes within
the corporation and against competitors means there is a very big chance
that the NoTW toxic tabloid journalism contagion will spread. The
criminal content did not remain isolated in Wapping, instead it would of
been spread throughout the 150 newspaper network.

Cross media would also have ensured the textual content would of been
spread into other formats like TV. In Australia FoxTel and Sky, in UK
BSkyB, the US Fox.

News International's newspapers are a small set of a single, unified,
global, newspaper production system. Its integrated principally by the
digital pagination and advertising system, which operates on the same
software as airlines or banks. Its a real-time market for matching ads
to editorial and selling content. There are 140 newspapers around the
world ALL sharing the same production system. The printing presses are
also part of the system, and KRM has made massive investments in these
news factories over the years.

... Staff are moved around the empire all the time. Journalists and
editors loyal to Murdoch, and prepared to do the dirty work are rewarded
and the industrial fuedalism of personal loyalty is very strong.

In this global news factory network, the cheapest form of content is
sleaze, then sport. Next is gossip. Then opinion. In the UK its ok to do
all of this, there is a market. In the US, the Republican moral
majority does not allow titties on television, but Fox News is built on
gossip. Research is expensive and often reveals unwelcome truths for the
proprietor or his advertisers. Sleaze, sport, gossip and opinion are
cheap and can be used to attack enemies.

Fox News is tabloid journalism for the TV age. I hate to think what is being done at MySpace.

It will be hard to contain the criminal liability just to the UK
papers when the business and editorial systems are global. 140
newspapers which now includes the WSJ

Just like the financial systems spread contagion in realtime, so too
the toxic journalism and criminal content is automatically syndicated
worldwide

--

The 140 newspapers in the News Corp network share a single production
platform where leads, new and finished stories are edited and moved
around the world in realtime.

The editorial process is global. For purposes of beating the
competition to a scoop, unified messaging "being on message" as New
Labor put it, and for commercial synergy.

The real problem for news is that the benefits of this global production platform for newspapers is now a liability.

All the newspapers in the 140 paper network have shared in the
editorial process and the contagion of criminal content of the toxic
tabloids could spread.

Even though The Times of London and The News of the World dont talk
face to face, they share the same building and the same production
facility. They also share senior editors and executives, support staff
etc. The platform is shared.

To a very large extent the mastheads are just a branding and the
staff, content and so on move between newspapers (globally) all the
time.

Due to cross-media, tabloid print journalism often is re-purposed or
expanded for TV i.e. BSkyB (UK), Sky (AUS, UK), Foxtel (AUS) and Fox
(US)

The fact that News International (which is The Times, The Sun, The
News of The World) was a major node in establishing this global news
production system means that like the financial markets the contagion is
automatically spread.

The benefits from a global, integrated, realtime production system are now its greatest liability.

Hacking 4000+ victims is not journalism. Its organized crime. Its media as protection racket.

Nick Clegg: 'I fear another financial crisis'

Deputy Prime Minister says he is concerns the eurozone crisis could spread to
Britain and have a “direct impact” on jobs.

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

lol. Is that his best shot to distract Murdoch problem in his administration.

Man, he could have at least announced a false flag, attack some tiny country on false pretext, blame terrorist ... heck zombie attack or meteor about to wipe out civilization ...

6. The greatest risk for Cameron is that he might be ousted in a
Palace coup. Coalition survives, but with a different Conservative at
the helm, one completely untainted by the phone-hacking scandal. But the
question is, who? George Osborne? He was Coulson’s main cheerleader
within the Party. Boris? He’s not exactly squeaky clean and, in any
case, he’s not an MP. David Davis? Nothing to lose, but doesn’t enjoy
much cross-party support. The only half-way plausible candidate is Liam
Fox and his stock has fallen since the leadership election. For him to
attempt a Palace coup now he’d have to be much more confident of
success. If the scandal starts to become more damaging for Cameron,
expect Fox to start sharpening his knife. But it hasn’t reached the
tipping point yet.

7. To date, Cameron’s handling of the crisis hasn’t been too bad.
Yes, hiring Coulson was an error of judgment, but since the scandal hit
the headlines in the first week of July the Prime Minister hasn’t made
any serious mistakes. He’s distanced himself from Coulson and Brooks,
helped torpedo the BSkyB deal and ordered a public inquiry. His strategy
of trying to appear statesmanlike, resisting Miliband’s attempts to
engage him in party political warfare over the issue, is surely correct.
He was also right to voluntarily make public his appointments diary at
the end of last week – better to get the information out there all at
once than be forced to disclose it in dribs and drabs. He hasn’t been as
sure-footed as he was during the five days that followed the election,
but he hasn’t stumbled either. Not yet, anyway.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100097312/is-david-cameron-going-to-be-the-next-victim-of-the-murdochalypse/

Some of the best contemporaneous coverage of the scandal came from BNet’s Jim Edwards. In April 2009, he found this nugget
from a trial transcript. The context is a lunch meeting between
Carlucci and two brothers who would end up in court against him:

A: At a certain point in the conversation Mr. Carlucci
turned to Richard and said, “So, I understand your –-” words to the
effect, “So, I understand you’re here to sell your company?”

Q: And was there a response?

A: We were –- I was surprised to hear that, and Richard’s response
was, “No. That’s not why we’re here. We were really here to meet you,
and to discuss the possibility of doing joint promotions.”

Q: What happened after that?

A: … he followed that by saying, “From now on, consider me, us your
competitor, and understand this, if you ever get into any of our
businesses, I will destroy you.” And he said, “I work for a man who wants it all, and doesn’t understand anybody telling him he can’t have it all.” And that ended his discussion.

This, of course, is the real Murdoch, as opposed to the man who will
cry crocodile tears of remorse in front of Britain’s parliament on
Tuesday. This is the Murdoch who took Piers Morgan and Rebekah Wade and
appointed them to run the News of the World while they were still in
their twenties: a clear sign that he had no interest in editors with the
wisdom of many years’ experience, and would much prefer someone more
ambitious and tractable.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/07/18/the-real-rupert-murdoch-exposed/

Cameron's Firewalls Fall

Basically, Britain has lost its two senior police officers because of the revolving door of interest between News International and the Metropolitan Police. These officers were supposed to have investigated the initial hacking claims five years ago.

However, Yates' predecessor Andy Hayman left the Met to join News
International. Meanwhile Yates and Stephenson recruited a former deputy
editor of the News of the World, Neil Wallis, as their press advisor.
You can see the problem...

And this is where the flames lick the Prime Minister's feet.

1. Stephenson and Yates resigned because of their professional employment of a Deputy Editor of the News of the World.

2. Cameron employed the Editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, as his Press Spokesman

Ergo

3. Shouldn't Cameron resign?

Developments Stateside

Meanwhile in the US, it appears the DOJ are already in contact with British police: US DoJ sounds out Serious Fraud Office on News International

The interest of the Washington-based DoJ stems from the US
nationality of the News of the World's and News International's parent
company, News Corporation.

It is illegal for any US company to pay bribes to overseas officials, under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/18/995756/-FALL-OF-THE-HOUSE-OF-MURDOCH-VIII:Firewalls-Fail-:DOJ-probes:-Miliband-connects-Media-Politics-Banks?via=siderec

Australia govt steps up rhetoric over Murdoch papers

NYT: News Corp Hacked Rival US Company

A recent story in the Nixonian News Corporation saga describes how subsidiary News America Marketing broke into the computer system of a rival company:        

In the case of News America Marketing, its obscure but
profitable in-store and newspaper insert marketing business, the News
Corporation has paid out about $655 million to make embarrassing charges
of corporate espionage and anticompetitive behavior go away...

In 2009, a federal case in New Jersey brought by a company called
Floorgraphics went to trial, accusing News America of, wait for it,
hacking its way into Floorgraphics’s password protected computer system.

The complaint summed up the ethos of News America nicely, saying it
had “illegally accessed plaintiff’s computer system and obtained
proprietary information” and “disseminated false, misleading and
malicious information about the plaintiff.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/19/996087/-NYT:-News-Corp-Hacked-Rival-US-Company?via=siderec

David had 26 meetings with NI over the last 16 months:

But the timing is important. David Cameron avoided Murdoch till 2007
when he recruited, thanks to Osbourne and Brooks (then Wade) David
Coulson

In 2009 a month before  James Murdoch his notorious McTaggart lecture
laying into Ofcom and the BBC in tandem with the BSkyB bid.

1. . The then leader of the opposition spoke about making a 'bonfire
on the quangos'. First of the quangos he wanted to incinerate? Ofcom

2. I spoke to a couple of Tory advisors in June 2010 (along with a
well known NI journalist but Chatham House rules applied). They
confirmed that they wanted to see the BBC vastly reduced in size -
exactly the main thrust of JM's lecture.

3. On taking up office at Number 10, Cameron reduced the BBC's budget
by 16% by funding the World Service through the license fee, rather
than the Foreign Office.

4. Vince Cable supervised the quasi judicial takeover process of the
BSkyB, but the Conservatives (unlike Labour) refused to refer it to the
competition authority, and instead when down the much weaker plurality
route.

It was also James Murdoch's McTaggart lecture which caused the rift
with Gordon Brown according to  Isabel Oakeshott in the Sunday Times.

It was a stringent critique of the BBC and Ofcom, the media regulator. Brown hated every word.

Inside Downing Street, he pored over the text, line by line. "I can't
overstate how important that speech was," said a former Labour
strategist who was with Brown at the time. "It changed everything. He
saw it as very rightwing and a direct attack on what we were doing. He
felt the Murdochs didn't share any of our values."

So within a year of James Murdoch's speech, Cameron had given the
Murdochs all they asked for. Then, two days after he was installed in No
10, Cameron invited Murdoch over to - in Rupert's words - "Thank him
for the help in the campaign."

Further UK investigations

The scandal has triggered multiple investigations from various
governmental agencies looking at other News Corporation-owned media
outlets in addition to News of the World.

With the unfolding scandal at the News of the World came allegations that another News Corporation-owned tabloid, The Sun,
itself engaged in phone hacking. In February 2011, the Metropolitan
Police investigated the claims of Scottish trade union leader Andy
Gilchrist, who accused The Sun of hacking into his mobile phone
in order to run negative stories about him; the stories were published
shortly after Rebekah Brooks was installed as the paper's editor.^[180]

On 5 July 2011, the head of the Press Complaints Commission Baroness Buscombe said in interview with Andrew Neil on the BBC programme The Daily Politics, that she had been lied to by the News of the World over phone hacking.^[181]
Buscombe said that she did not know the extent of the scandal when she
joined the PCC in 2009, but stated that she had been "misled by the News
of the World" after she had previously concluded just the opposite.^[181]
Buscome further admitted that her statement put out in 2009, when the
PCC had reviewed the 2007 evidence, that "Having reviewed all the
information available, we concluded that we were not materially misled;"^[182] was now in hindsight incorrect.^[181]
This led to Labour leader Ed Milliband calling the PCC a "toothless
poddle," and in agreement with Prime Minister David Cameron proposed the
creation of a new press watchdog.^[183]

On 11 July, the day after the News of the World ceased publication, The Guardian reported that Scotland Yard was investigating both The Sun and The Sunday Times for illegally gaining access to the financial, phone, and legal records of former prime minister Gordon Brown. It was also reported that The Sun improperly obtained medical information on Brown's infant son in order to publish stories about his diagnosis of cystic fibrosis.
Brown issued a statement saying that his family was "shocked by the
level of criminality and the unethical means by which personal details
have been obtained."^[184]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_of_the_World_phone_hacking_affair#Number_of_victims

News Corp Stalked Subjects through Cell Phone 'Pinging'

News Intl. threatened retaliation against Gordon Brown; New York Post facing similar allegations

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 No 10,
he needed to learn that was not how things were done.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/13/994313/-News-Intl-threatened-retaliation-against-Gordon-Brown;-New-York-Post-facing-similar-allegations?via=blog_1

Let’s assume that neither was
killed by Rupert Murdoch (toxicology reports haven’t been made
available; foul play isn’t suspected by British authorities in either
case), but something happened that put the fear of God into both men.
 Neither was known as a lunatic before their demise, both simply told
the truth to British authorities about what they knew of Mr. Murdoch’s
enterprises and died afterward at a relatively young age.

Sean Hoare

Mr.
Hoare’s role in the evolving scandal is obvious: he worked at News of
the World and broke the scandal wide open by charging his former editor,
and then Prime Minister David Cameron’s Communications Director Andy
Coulson, with lying about his role in NOTW’s phone hacking.  Big George,
for his part, allegedly revealed in private testimony to British
authorities the fact that the Sky TV show he worked on in the early 90′s
,”Jameson Tonight”, had routinely bugged the dressing rooms of guests
looking for scoops. Mr Webley’s charge was relevant because News Corp.’s
initial defense was that the hacking at NOTW was the work of a rogue
reporter.  Big George’s charge threw cold water on that defense by
helping to establish a pattern of subterfuge over many years at
Murdoch-owned enterprises.

http://yesbuthowever.com/two-murdoch-whistleblowers-dead-5000943/

This case is big and serious. They are sending the plumber and clean up crews. ...and watch out. These people are above the law.

They are obviously still listening and tracking every leakers.... They should set a trap. I bet they fall for it and kill somebody in front of recording camera.

Two Ex-News Of The World Employees Claim James Murdoch Misled Parliament

A former reporter and the former legal manager for News Of The World
are disputing part of James Murdoch's Tuesday testimony before
Parliament, saying he knew there were other reporters involved in the
phone hacking before News Corp settled a phone hacking lawsuit by the
former head of Professional Footballers' Association.

Here's the story:

Gordon Taylor, then the chief executive of the PFA, sued News Of The World
for phone hackings that took place in 2005. In an out-of-court
settlement, News Corp paid Taylor a confidential six-figure sum in 2008.
Though Murdoch told Parliament the company was advised by lawyers to
pay Taylor £250,000 (around $400,000), according to a report by The Guardian the total may have been closer to £600,000 (around $1 million), including legal expenses.

The Department of Justice is preparing subpoenas for preliminary investigations of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ (owned by News Corp) reports
that an anonymous government official says the subpoenas have not yet
been approved by senior DOJ officials, which would have to happen before
they could be issued.

The investigation would examine whether News Corp violated the
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prevents bribery of foreign
officials, if reporters for its British News Of The World tabloid bribed members of Scotland Yard. The investigation would also examine allegations that NOTW reporters hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims.

News Corp, which is based in the U.S., has recently begun adding to its legal team in the U.S. -- including an expert in FCPA, according to the WSJ.

Specialist detectives from the Metropolitan Police have
discovered the existence of a secret mobile phone within News
International’s east London headquarters that was used in more than
1,000 incidents of illegal hacking.

.

The Independent has established that the phone, nicknamed “the hub”,
was registered to News International and located on the News of the
World’s news desk. Operation Weeting, the Metropolitan Police’s hacking
inquiry, has evidence that it was used illegally to access 1,150 numbers
between 2004 and 2006.

http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/police-find-murdoch-hacking-phone-in-london/

how can they "just find" a phone with 1000 nodes connection? Aren't they suppose to spy on all terrorists phone calls? If Murdoch can hide such phones, than anybody can.

An excerpt:

LONDON —As a government-commissioned inquiry into Britain’s
journalistic practices opened on Monday, its chief lawyer delivered a
series of bombshell revelations about what he called a “thriving cottage industry” of illegality at the defunct News of the World tabloid.

...

Mr. Jay said that 11,000 pages in notebooks belonging to the private
investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, reveal that he conducted 2,266
investigations on behalf of at least 28 different employees of News
International, the British newspaper arm of News Corporation, over
several years. Four of those employees — listed in the notebooks under
various code letters — apparently commissioned 2,143 of those
investigations. The most prolific of the four commissioned 1,453 alone.

...But the information from Mr. Mulcaire’s notebooks, seized by the
police in 2006, contradicts News International’s claim, Mr. Jay said,
suggesting instead a pattern of “wide-ranging illegal acts within the organization.”

...

He also said that the inquiry had seen documents suggesting that
phones were being hacked as early as May 2001 — at least a year earlier
than previously disclosed — and that the practice continued until 2009,
two years after Mr. Goodman and Mr. Mulcaire were jailed.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/14/1036480/-Murdochgate:-NYT-Writes-News-Corps-Obituary?via=siderec