Thread: Phone Hacking scandal snowballs

Whistleblower ready to tell inquiry others also hacked phones

• Peter Wilson
• From: The Australian
• July 22, 2011 6:58PM

Fleet Street whistleblower James Hipwell, who says the News of the World was not the only newspaper to hack phones. The Australian



A FORMER reporter for the Daily Mirror who says the News of the World was not the only British newspaper involved in phone hacking says he's likely to make himself available to testify to the judicial inquiry into the scandal.

James Hipwell, 45, told The Australian Online he saw show business reporters on the Daily Mirror regularly intercept voicemail messages when he worked there from 1998 to 2000.
Hipwell is the only Fleet Street whistleblower who is offering to go on the record with accounts of voicemail hacking at newspapers other than the News of the World, which was closed down by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation two weeks ago.
“I know that for one simple reason: I used to see it going on around me all the time when I worked at the Daily Mirror,” he said in an interview that will appear in The Australian tomorrow.
“I sat right next to the show business desk and there were some show biz reporters who did it as a matter of course, as a basic part of their working day.


“One of their bosses would wander up and instruct a reporter to `trawl the usual suspects', which meant going through the voice messages of celebrities and celebrity PR agents.”
“For everyone to pretend that this is some isolated activity found only at the News of the World is ridiculous, it's just a lie.”
Hipwell said that depending on legal advice he would be willing to speak to the police and to the inquiry headed by Lord Justice Brian Leveson into the hacking scandal and the future regulation of Britain's press.
Trinity Mirror, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, denied Hipwell's claims, issuing a statement declaring that: “Our journalists work within the criminal law and the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct.”
Chris Hughes, a show business reporter during Hipwell's time at the Mirror who has since become a defence correspondent, told The Australian Online that he had never hacked voicemails or been aware of the practice at the Mirror.
The first whistleblower in the scandal, Sean Hoare, worked at Trinity Mirror's Sunday People as well as News Corporation's Sun and News of the World, but he died this week from what was rumoured to be a drug overdose.
Paul McMullan, the other prominent whistleblower who has repeatedly spoken about phone hacking and other illegal practices, worked at the News of the World.
Hoare was sacked by the then NOTW editor Andy Coulson in 2005 because of his drug and drink addictions. McMullan has left the industry to run a pub and admits that he has a grudge against his former editor, Rebekah Brooks.
Hipwell also fell out with his former employer. He left the Mirror in disgrace in 2000 before being convicted five years later on market-rigging charges over “City Slickers”, a share-tipping column he wrote with a colleague.
Hipwell served 59 days in jail and was bitter to see his former editor Piers Morgan escape charges.
Morgan told investigators that it was a coincidence that he suddenly ploughed all the money he could get his hands on, Stg67,000, into shares of a relatively small firm on the day that City Slickers was about to tip it as a hot prospect, doubling its share price.
Hipwell has since written for The Guardian and The Observer. He has now moved his career to Lebanon, and writes largely about the issue of organ donation, having received a kidney transplant from his wife.
Hipwell's interview with The Australian Online is the first time he has discussed the phone hacking issue since giving an interview to The Guardian after a News of the World reporter and private investigator were first arrested five years ago.
The New York Times yesterday reported that five former journalists at the Mirror's stablemate The People had said that they regularly witnessed hacking in that newsroom in the late 1990s to early 2000, but they spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“I don't think anyone quite realised the criminality of it,” said one of the unnamed former reporters at The People.

BREAKING NEWS - Rupert Murdoch regrets hiring David Cameron as Prime Minister.

Originally Posted by English Noodles

BREAKING NEWS - Rupert Murdoch regrets hiring David Cameron as Prime Minister.

Originally Posted by foreigner

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

How many fucking lawyers did these two bring with them?

who was the olive skinned guy in the green tie, over James left shoulder / screen right.
his interest picked up when ever james talked about 'lawyers / legal advice'

he posture & hand fidgeting changed when ever james spoke of legal advice concerning the 600k & 1000k payments & legal advice concerning those payments
the only time he spoke to the tall man w/ pink tie to his right / screen left was when james finished talking about legal advice & the 2 'settlement payments'

murdocks wife moved immediately toward the pie guy
james was the only one not to move toward the attacker .. he moved back keeping his dad between himself & the pie guy.

When Joel Klein left his post as head of New York City schools to join Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. last year, many observers expected his new gig as senior adviser would be lower-profile and better-paid. So far, it is definitely not the former.As Murdoch and his son James were grilled by British lawmakers in the phone hacking scandal Tuesday, Klein was seated just behind them, next to Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng. He wore a dark suit; she a bright pink blazer. Deng stole the show when she leaped up to slap a comedian who tried to toss a pie in the elder Murdoch's face. Klein started to stand up during the commotion, then plopped back down as she let loose a smack.

• The former assistant attorney general under President Bill Clinton
• He was best known for leading the Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft that eventually led to changes in how the company sells its Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browser
• the vanguard of educational reform and his name was floated as a possible candidate for national education secretary

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Klein-s-DC-NYC-work-prep-for-News-Corp-scandal-1542226.php

Typicaly arrogant and ignorant Chinese.

Originally Posted by English Noodles

BREAKING NEWS - Rupert Murdoch regrets hiring David Cameron as Prime Minister.

Now this would be an incredible twist. I wonder how far from the truth it is?

Trinity Mirror launches investigation following phone hacking allegations
Publisher Trinity Mirror has launched a review into editorial standards after it was claimed phone hacking took place at its titles.



Trinity Mirror has launched an internal investigation into phone hacking at its titles
10:50AM BST 26 Jul 2011
The publisher took the step after shares fell by 9.8 per cent following allegations that phone hacking had taken place at the Daily Mirror.
Both Lib Dem MP Adrian Sanders and Tory MP Louise Mensch have claimed the Daily Mirror was suspected of using phone-hacking to reveal the affair between Sven-Goran Eriksson and Ulrika Jonsson in 2003.
James Hipwell, who used to work at the Mirror, also said hacking was a common tactic among his former colleagues.
"It was seen as a bit of a wheeze, slightly underhand but something many of them did," James Hipwell was quoted as saying by The Independent on Saturday.
"After they'd hacked into someone's mobile they'd delete the message so another paper couldn't get the story,"
Trinity Mirror and the newspaper’s former editor Piers Morgan have denied the claims, with the company insisting that “our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] code of conduct."
Sly Bailey, chief executive, even wrote to the head of parliament's media committee to complain after it was suggested one of its national papers had been involved in hacking.
But yesterday Trinity Mirror said they would review editorial standards.
A senior Trinity employee who did not want to be named told the Financial Times: "We have to check whether any regulations and controls are dysfunctional and whether bad practice has set in.
"We als need to ensure that the provenance of stories is understood at senior editorial levels."
Hipwell, who was fired from the Mirror in 2000, first aired the claim nearly a decade ago. His dismissal from the Mirror, coupled with a conviction for market manipulation several years later, may have also gone some way toward denting his credibility.
Still his claim has received renewed attention given the intense focus on Britain's media following the eruption of a phone hacking scandal which has shaken British politics, tarnished the reputation of the country's top police force and weakened Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
It's been backed by allegations of misbehaviour at the Mirror's sister tabloids. The New York Times last week quoted five former journalists at The People, a Sunday newspaper which is also published by Trinity Mirror PLC, as saying that phone hacking was commonplace there from the late 1990s to early 2000.
Trinity Mirror PLC itself has repeatedly declined to address claims of past misbehaviour at its titles, sticking to a one-line statement saying that "our journalists work within the criminal law and the (U.K. press watchdog's) code of conduct."
But its stance change yesterday after the group launched a six week review which will look into all of the group's regional and national papers including the Daily Record, the Sunday Mirror and the People.
Paul Vickers, the legal director of Trinity Mirror is expected to report back mid-September.
In 2006 the Information Commissioner published a report called 'What price privacy?" which looked into how many times journalists on newspapers had used private investigators to obtain personal information.
The Daiy Mirror and The People came in the top five.
The phone hacking scandal exploded earlier this month with revelations that journalists at the News of the World tabloid hacked the phone of a 13-year-old murder victim while police were still searching for her and broadened to include claims reporters paid police for information.
That set off a firestorm which hit at the highest reaches of British society. It forced Murdoch to shutter News of the World, prompting a spate of high-profile resignations and departures at News Corp. and delivering the 80-year-old media baron and his son to be grilled before lawmakers.
So far Hipwell is the only journalist who has gone on the record with his claims.

Trinity Mirror launches investigation following phone hacking allegations - Telegraph

Now then - who said it was wrong to equate this 'scandal' with a move to swing a wide axe and cut journalists off at the knees? Who said this was all about Murdoch?

Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

Now then - who said it was wrong to equate this 'scandal' with a move to swing a wide axe and cut journalists off at the knees? Who said this was all about Murdoch?

No one. About one million posts ago I posted a chart showing the number of times that journalists had paid to obtain information that could not be obtained legally. It was published after the 2006 enquiry.

The Daily/Sunday Mail was the worst if I remember.

They've all been at it.

Oh good.... Of course, now he'll say "I don't recall......."

Piers Morgan has come under pressure after a recording emerged of him apparently admitting to knowledge of phone hacking during his time editing the Daily Mirror.

During an appearance on the BBC’s Desert Island Disks in 2009 Piers Morgan admits to presenter Kirsty Young he has knowledge of phone tapping and using “third parties” to get stories. He said: “I make no pretence about the stuff we used to do.”

The transcript of the exchange is below.

Young: And what about this nice middle class boy who would have to be dealing with, I mean, essentially people who rake through bins for a living, people who tap people’s phones, people who take secret photographs and do all that very nasty down in the gutter stuff?

Morgan: Yeah.. Well to be honest let’s put that in perspective as well, not a lot of that went on.

Presenter: Really?

Morgan: A lot of it was done by third parties rather than the staff themselves. That’s not to defend it because obviously you were running the results of their work. I’m quite happy to be parked in the corner as tabloid beast and to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to. I make no pretence about the stuff we used to do. I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide and certainly encompassed the high and low end of the newspaper market.

The CNN host has become a top target in the phone hacking scandal, with multiple reports accusing him of having knowledge of hacking while he was editor of the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004. A former Mirror journalist, James Hipwell, told the Independent that the practice was "endemic" and that it was "inconceivable" that Morgan did not know about it.

Morgan has vociferously denied every single charge. In one tweet, he wrote, "I've never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, or published any stories based on the hacking of a phone." He has also noted that Hipwell was jailed for manipulating the stock market and calling him a far from credible witness. He also had a scalding exchange with an MP who inaccurately said that he admitted to employing the practice in his memoirs.

However, the recording has come to light after news on Tuesday that the Daily Mirror, the paper Morgan formerly edited, has launched an internal review into phone hacking.

PopBitch is having fun with this.

From the Guardian 2002:

Ring, a ring a story
How appropriate that the most glamourous event in the showbusiness calender should be sponsored by a phone company. Mohan went on to thank "Vodafone's lack of security" for the Mirror's showbusiness exclusives. Whatever does he mean?

From PopBitch on July 8th:

As the self-appointed scourge of paedos and the promoters of Sarah's law, it was only natural that the News Of The World would be on hand to comfort the victims' families in many of the most horrific crimes of the last decade. And such was their apparent determination to rid the country of child sex offenders, it wouldn't have seemed too weird if a senior NOTW figure sympathetically handed over a mobile phone at no expense to the victim - so that they could all keep in touch. And then, of course, there would be no problem monitoring those phones, would there? If the rumours going around News International about who the person handing out the phone was are anything more substantial than chatter from understandably bitter ex-employees then we might see some action on this website before too long: Has Rebekah Brooks Been Sacked Yet?

and from yesterday's Grauniad:

News of the World targeted phone of Sarah Payne's mother

Exclusive: Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire had personal details of murdered girl's mother Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted and murdered in July 2000, has been told by Scotland Yard that they have found evidence to suggest she was targeted by the News of the World's investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who specialised in hacking voicemail.Police had earlier told her correctly that her name was not among those recorded in Mulcaire's notes, but on Tuesday officers from Operation Weeting told her they had found her personal details among the investigator's notes. These had previously been thought to refer to a different target.Friends of Payne have told the Guardian that she is "absolutely devastated and deeply disappointed" at the disclosure. Her cause had been championed by the News of the World, and in particular by its former editor, Rebekah Brooks. Believing that she had not been a target for hacking, Payne wrote a farewell column for the paper's final edition on 10 July, referring to its staff as "my good and trusted friends".

• The evidence that police have found in Mulcaire's notes is believed to relate to a phone given to Payne by Brooks to help her stay in touch with her supporters. On Thursday night Brooks insisted the phone had not been a personal gift but had been provided to Payne by the News of the World "for the benefit of the campaign for Sarah's law".

Poor Piers, the sharks are circling....

It has taken several weeks for Piers Morgan to become entangled in the phone hacking net, but it now looks probable that he’ll receive an invitation from John Whittingdale MP to appear before the Culture, Media and Sport select committee. That is an extremely perilous position for the ex-editor of the News of the World and the Daily Mirror to find himself in.

Morgan’s eventual summons was probably inevitable, but he has not helped his cause by allowing himself to be drawn into spats with Louise Mensch MP and Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes.

His name first surfaced in connection with this scandal during the House of Commons emergency debate on phone hacking on July 6th. Liberal Democrat MP Adrian Sanders claimed that the Daily Mirror had used “voicemail interception to reveal Sven-Goran Eriksson’s affair with Ulrika Jonsson” and that it had done this “when under the auspices of Piers Morgan”.

This was followed up by a more detailed account of the same episode on Guido Fawkes’s website in which the blogger claimed that in 2002 James Scott, then a Daily Mirror showbiz reporter and now the deputy editor of the Sunday Mirror, listened to Ulrika Jonsson’s voicemails and discovered several messages left by a Swedish-speaking man. Scott played the messages back to a half-Swedish Daily Mirror secretary who translated them, revealing that the mystery caller was Sven-Goran Eriksson. From there, the Mirror was able to piece together the story that the the two were having an affair and duly broke it on April 19th, 2002. Curiously, it was credited to the 3AM Girls rather than Scott and the 3AM Girls went on to win Scoop of the Year for the story at the 2003 British Press Awards.

In a follow-up post, Guido pointed out that in The Insider, the first volume of Morgan’s diaries, the ex-tabloid editor revealed that he knew how to hack phones. The revealing entry is dated January 26th, 2001:

"Apparently if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages. I’ll change mine just in case, but it makes me wonder how many public figures and celebrities are aware of this little trick."

This revelation may have been what triggered Louise Mensch’s introduction of Morgan’s name during the Murdochs’ select committee appearance. She accused him of saying in The Insider that he had hacked phones and that’s how he had obtained the Sven-Goran Eriksson/Urlika Jonsson story.

This prompted a furious denial by Morgan on CNN in which he called Mensch a “liar” and challenged her to repeat what she’d said outside Parliament. “At no stage in my book or indeed outside of my book have I ever boasted of using phone hacking for any stories,” he said. “For the record, in my time at the Mirror and the News of the World I have never hacked a phone, told anybody to hack a phone or published any story based on the hacking of a phone.”

Technically speaking, Morgan had a point. He doesn’t claim that any stories he published as editor of the Mirror or the News of the World were based on phone hacking in The Insider. The mistake Louise Mensch made was to cite the wrong volume of diaries. As Guido subsequently pointed out, the smoking gun is in his third volume of diaries, God Bless America: Misadventures of a Big Mouth Brit. The relevant entry states:

"Nancy Dell’Olio left a voicemail message for me.

“Piers, darling, I am in Rome and thinking of you. I hope you have recovered from our night together. Let’s get together again soon, you naughty man. Love Nancy.”

Given that it was the Daily Mirror, under my editorship, which exposed Sven’s fling with Urlika Jonsson after learning of a similar message left by the then England manager on her phone, I can only hope and pray the gutter press (ha ha) aren’t hacking into my mobile."

On the face of it, that seems like a straightforward admission of guilt, as did Morgan’s comments during his appearance on Desert Island Discs in 2009. But Piers mounted a subsequent defence in a flurry of late-night Twitter messages a few days ago in which he linked to two different accounts of how the Mirror obtained the story in question.

The first link was to a site called Zelo Street which had dug up a 2002 Private Eye story claiming that the Mirror had pinched the Sven-Goran Eriksson/Ulrika Jonsson story from the News of the World. The Eye credited James Scott with bringing the story in, but said it was unclear whether he had been tipped off by a disgruntled News of the World hack or been gifted the story by Ulrika Jonsson’s publicist in return for more sympathetic coverage. However, the original Eye story doesn’t entirely put Morgan in the clear even if it’s true. After all, it’s possible that Scott received a tip off from a News of the World hack that prompted him to listen to Ulrika’s voicemails in which case the illegal interception of Ulrika’s voicemail still took place on Morgan’s watch – and, as his subsequent diary entry suggests, he knew how his paper had come by the story.

The second story linked to by Morgan appeared in The Drum, an online media newsletter. This story cited a 2002 Guardian report claiming that Morgan himself, not Scott, had done a deal with Ulrika’s publicist who wanted to spoil the News of the World story. According to this account, the reason the story was credited to the 3AM girls is because one aspect of the deal was that it would be a treated as a showbiz story rather than a news story. Again, this story doesn’t preclude the possibility that a Mirror journalist hacked into Ulrika’s voicemail, but if it was done in collusion with her publicist it would make it hard to prosecute that journalist or his editor for illegally intercepting voicemails.

James Scott, as far as I can tell, has never responded to the allegation that he illegally intercepted Ulrika Jonsson’s voicemail and, at the time of going to press, he hadn’t responded to my twitter and telephone messages inviting him to respond. Whatever the exact manner in which the Mirror came by the Sven-Goran Eriksson/Ulrika Jonsson story, Morgan still isn’t in the clear. His rebuttal of the initial allegations has inevitably led to another flurry of accusations, none of which he’s yet responded to. For instance, Guido dug up a Daily Mail piece Morgan wrote in 2006 in which he claimed to have listened to a voicemail left on Heather Mills’s phone by Paul McCartney, begging her to come back to him:

"[A]t one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone.

It was heartbreaking. The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang ‘We Can Work It Out’ into the answerphone."

This, too, isn’t conclusive evidence that Morgan condoned phone hacking or published any stories in the News of the World or the Mirror based on phone hacking. But it doesn’t look good.

Meanwhile, James Hipwell, one of two Mirror journalists jailed over the City Slickers scandal, has given an interview in The Australian in which he claims phone hacking was rife at the Mirror under Morgan’s editorship:

"I used to see it going on around me all the time when I worked at the Daily Mirror.

I sat right next to the show business desk and there were some show biz reporters who did it as a matter of course, as a basic part of their working day.

One of their bosses would wander up and instruct a reporter to ‘trawl the usual suspects’, which meant going through the voice messages of celebrities and celebrity PR agents.

For everyone to pretend that this is some isolated activity found only at the News of the World is ridiculous, it’s just a lie."

In light of this, it seems inconceivable that Hipwell won’t receive an invitation from James Whittingdale MP as well.

Morgan managed to avoid prosecution over the City Slickers scandal and his career survived the setback of being fired from the Daily Mirror after it emerged that the photographs he’d published of British servicemen and women abusing Iraqi prisoners were fake. But he’s going to have to be very fleet-footed to avoid being further embroiled in the phone hacking scandal. His problem is that he has three sets of enemies, all determined to see him fall.

First, there are those Conservative MPs, like Louise Mensch, who want to drag his name into this scandal for straightforward political reasons. Not only is the Mirror a Labour paper, but in The Insider Morgan claims to have met Tony Blair 46 times and he became close to Gordon Brown during his tenure as Prime Minister, coaxing a sympathetic interview out of him in the run-up to the General Election. He’s not quite Blair and Brown’s Andy Coulson, but he’s not far off.

Second, there are the current and ex-employees of News International, many of them quite senior, who feel it’s unjust that the News of the World should be taking all the flak for phone hacking when, as seems abundantly clear, the practice was rife among all the red-tops. Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks may feel a personal loyalty to Morgan who’s a friend of theirs and has stood by them during the scandal, but there’ll be others for whom the urge to bring Morgan down will be too powerful to resist.

Third, there are those, like Hipwell, who have a personal axe to grind. Morgan has a lot of enemies, some of whom could well be ex-employees who know where the skeletons are buried. I’d be surprised if Hipwell is the only ex-Mirror hack to come out of the woodwork in the coming weeks and months.

Morgan may yet be able to wriggle off the hook – if anyone can, he can – but he needs to take these charges more seriously. So far, his responses to both Louise Mensch and Paul Staines have been a bit scattergun, firing off over-emphatic denials, raging on Twitter at 1.00AM, etc. There’s no evidence that he’s given the matter much thought, no sign yet of a political, legal or PR strategy. He would be wise to get some proper professional advice if he hasn’t already.

His biggest mistake so far has been in underestimating Staines, whom he dismissed on Twitter as a “druggie ex-bankrupt”. Staines is, in fact, a shrewd media operator who has already claimed several political scalps. When it comes to the way in which the tit-for-tat rhythm of claim and counter-claim plays out in the frenzied, Internet-driven, 24-hour news cycle, the “druggie ex-bankrupt” is something of a master. He hasn’t yet taken down anyone as big as Morgan, but the ex-tabloid editor is going to have to tread much more carefully from now on if he’s going to avoid being another trophy on Staines’s hunting wall.

Kerry Packer must be rolling around laughing in his grave, with his old nemisis being hung out to dry like this

http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2011/07/...s-the-insider/


"It occurred to me last night that there are millions of Americans who don’t know anything like as much about Romping Arse Piers Morgan as we unlucky souls over here do. So as The Slog gets 15% of its readership from the US of A, this article is primarily targeted towards those folks. However, there may also be lots of you in the UK who, either through memory loss or being incredibly young, may not know the full story of those clouds forever hanging over Arse Rim Pong.

The irony of the title of Morgan’s first book is that, at one point in 2005, he was very much accused of being an insider. James Hipwell (the man who last week told the Independent that the idea of Morgan having “never knowingly published a story based on phone-hacking” was “inconceivable”) has been made to look ‘dodgy’ as a witness is his former employer’s tweets – the very same Piers Morgan. This is because in 2006, the whistleblower Hipwell was convicted of tipping shares in his Mirror column, while also buying them. (The offences occurred in 2000, for which Hipwell was fired).

As usual, however, Moron’s stance on this is very misleading. And tends to leave his own role in the scandal out.

For when he was Mirror editor, Piers Morgan “encouraged” his City columnists to buy and sell shares themselves, James Hipwell claimed in court at the time. The share tipster said he had been “very open” about his own share dealings and that no one at the paper had ever suggested he was doing anything wrong. Asked under oath whether Mr Morgan knew what he was doing, Mr Hipwell replied: “Yes, he did. I made no secret that was what I did, I was encouraged to do so.” In fact, Hipwell told the jury that his former editor Morgan had used the analogy of someone who had “never been in a car trying to teach someone else to drive” as his rationale for why the paper’s City tipsters should trade in shares themselves.

When the MGN high-ups found out what was going on, Hipwell was given the boot: but as you’d expect of the MGN management, the police were not called in. More grubby stuff then came to light. Morgan was dragged into the scandal because he had bought £20,000 of shares in Viglen, a technology company owned by Sir Alan Sugar, one day before it was tipped by the Hipwell column. His shares doubled in value when the company announced it was moving to set up an internet business. Morgan insisted that this – let’s not beat about the bush here – insider trading – was “a coincidence”. As a defence, it’s right up there with Newscorp phones accidentally going off in pockets 37 times….and then accessing celeb voicemails. But astonishingly, an internal MGN ‘inquiry’ cleared Morgan of any wrong doing.

The Daily Mirror was then quite rightly accused of a harbouring a “cavalier culture” by the Press Complaints Commission, following which CNN host Piers Morgan, upright defender of his innocence against the groundless attacks of lying smearers, was forced to apologise.

What I’d like Piers to do now is tell us all this:

1. If he was innocent, why did he apologise to the PCC?

2. Did he ever contest Hipwell’s evidence? I can’t find anything saying he did: but if he didn’t, why not?

3. How come – as with the now arrested and charged Andy Coulson – everyone saw and heard Piers doing one thing, but he and he alone insists another thing happened…or it’s all made up? He serenaded the Mirror newsroom using facts that could only have come from hacking Paul McCartney’s phone. He was Mirror editor when Amanda Holden was tipped off that her phone was being hacked by the Mirror. He paced up and down the newsroom 24/7, avidly looking at everyone’s activities and stories; hacking was rife at the time, but he didn’t see any of it, and he definitely never used any of it. But on Radio 4 two years ago, he said he did.

Morgan’s encouragement of James Hipwell led to him going to jail. But Piers never lifted a finger to help him, even though (if the allegations was true) he was insider trading more criminally than Hipwell. Somehow, he wriggled away from an insider trading charge….yet now rips Hipwell as ‘a jailbird’.

Such a lovely bloke, eh? You know, sometimes you can pinpoint an arsehole by his actions and statements. And quite often, by the company he keeps. This is Piers with one of his great buddies only a few years back:



Yes, it’s the utterly depraved former Newscorp CEO Rebekah Brooks. Yesterday here in the UK, it emerged that Brooks had given a mobile phone to the mother of murdered kiddy Sarah Payne “as a gift”….and then hacked it. You think she can’t go any lower than that? Wait until the civil cases start coming through before Justice Vos: the evidence of her direct use of, and commissioning of, phone-hack stings is enormous and damning.

But there’s more than guilt by association involved in my bringing this to your attention, oh American cousins and favourite allies: for when Piers was editor of The News of the World in the 1990s, a young cub reporter was his assistant for much of the time, and talks fondly of all the tricks learned at Morgan’s knee. Her name? Why, none other than Rebekah Brooks.

CNN beware: if you want a piece of devious low-life anchoring your CNN chat slot, then give Piers your unwavering support. Morgan can smear his critics as liars, drunks, druggies and jailbirds, but he can’t smear The Slog or Private Eye….neither of whom he has tweeted against.

The reason is simple: we’re telling the truth, and he knows it. Piers Morgan is toast, trust me: half a dozen entirely respectable journalists are, as I speak, following up leads on Piers’ use of illegality to get tabloid stories. They’re finding more and more formerly scared folks now happy to talk. The Lord Leveson Press Inquiry starts very soon, and the Chairman has made clear his determination to find every hacker in town. There is no way Piers Morgan can come out of that squeaky clean – or anything like it."

About bloody time.

LONDON | Sat Jul 30, 2011 11:02am BST

(Reuters) - London police probing phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's defunct News of the World tabloid are broadening their investigation to allegations of computer hacking, they said on Saturday.
A new investigative team will be set up to tackle the new allegations, reporting to Sue Akers, the officer in charge of the phone hacking probe, the Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement.
"Operation Tuleta is currently considering a number of allegations regarding breach of privacy, received by the MPS since January 2011, which fall outside the remit of (phone-hacking) Operation Weeting, including computer hacking," the statement by the London police force said.
"Some aspects of this operation will move forward to a formal investigation."
London police reopened their investigation into phone hacking in January, shortly after the prime minister's communications chief, Andy Coulson, resigned because of allegations of phone hacking at the News of the World while he was the paper's editor.
The paper's royal reporter Clive Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire were jailed in 2007 for intercepting the voicemail messages of royal aides.
On Friday Mulcaire issued a statement through his lawyer saying he was not acting on his own initiative when he intercepted phone messages while in the pay of the newspaper.
Allegations of hacking at News Corp's British newspapers, in particular reports that journalists accessed the voicemails of murder victims, have triggered a judicial inquiry and calls by some politicians to cap News Corp's media ownership.
The scandal has led to News Corp dropping its $12 billion (7 billion pounds) bid for the 61 percent of pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB it does not own.
(Reporting by Olesya Dmitracova; editing by Tim Pearce)

If you saw this dumb twat, you'd wonder who the hell is interviewing for "intelligence officers". Nonetheless, a decent bit of shit stirring by Sky TV.

What sort of "intelligence officer" is that thick he let his computer get hacked?

Freelancer scouring for news stories for the Army PR department is more like it.

'Met Police Tried To Cover Up Hacking'



Last Updated: 9:50AM 31/07/2011

David Bowden, senior correspondent

The former Army intelligence officer at the centre of the latest hacking inquiry has told Sky News police tried to sweep his case under the carpet and accuses the Metropolitan force of endemic corruption.

Ian Hurst's computer was allegedly hacked by the News Of The World (NOTW) searching for details of an IRA informer.
Scotland Yard is launching an investigation into information allegedly gathered illegally from him by a private investigator who, it is alleged, was working for the tabloid.
Mr Hurst, who spent 12 years gathering information for the Government, said: "The private investigator has admitted that he placed a computer trojan on my hard drive and obtained, over a three-month period, all the email traffic coming in and out.
"He could access social media and ostensibly surveiled me for a given period."
Mr Hurst believes the hackers were looking for information on an informer for the IRA, called Steak-knife.
He has reams of documents relating to his case, which goes back to 2006, but he believes the police were reluctant to investigate properly at the time.
He said if they had acted then on the information they had, it would have stopped others from becoming victims.
"It's incredibly important that we understand the rationale for the decisions to effectively sweep this under the carpet," he said.
Mr Hurst claims it is more than just bad policing that allowed the gathering of information to go on for so long.
He said: "Fundamentally, what lays behind this whole cesspit - not since 2006, it predates it by many years before that - we're dealing with institutionalised corruption.
"It's endemic within the Metropolitan Police and that has to be dealt with."
Mr Hurst says his investigations point not only to the NOTW but other newspapers and beyond the media.
"Some of the clients that the private detectives were working for are large financial institutions, celebrities, major PR organisations.
"It's diverse. The client is the source. They're the people willing to pay large sums of money to obtain this unlawful information and if you don't address the source you can put 10, 50 private detectives away but you won't remove the demand for the information."
Scotland Yard is now running three separate investigations: one into phone interceptions, one into computer crime and the third into police corruption.
Meanwhile, Labour has called on Prime Minister David Cameron and his most senior colleagues to "come clean" about their dealings with the Murdochs.
Senior party figures have sent out a series of letters to Cabinet ministers with more than 50 questions they say have not been addressed by the coalition in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.

And again - why is Scotland Yard being allowed to run an investigation into police corruption? It gives them ample opportunity to destroy evidence.

Piers will be staying in America for the time being I fancy....

LONDON: The police probing the phone- hacking issue on Tueday arrested Stuart Kuttner, former managing editor of the now defunct News of the World tabloid of media Mogul Rupert Murdoch, marking the 11th arrest in the case.

Kuttner, 70, apparently did not know he was going to be taken into custody when he arrived by appointment with his solicitor at a police station in London at 11 am today to answer questions about the phone-hacking scandal.

As per normal practice, Scotland Yard has not released the name of the arrested person, but according to Sky News and The Guardian, he is Stuart Kuttner, who was a leading figure in the News of the World until 2009.

Kuttner was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and on suspicion of corruption.

Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the News of the World, was also arrested under the same charges.

Kuttner resigned as the managing editor in 2009, after playing a leading role in the tabloid's 'Sarah's Law' campaign, which sought to change the law so parents can be told when registered sex offenders move into their area. He was previously news editor at the London Evening Standard.

Police from both Operation Weeting, the Metropolitan police investigation into phone hacking, and Elveden, the investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police, were reported to have been involved in the arrest.

The development is the latest in a scandal that has already caused the closure of the 168-year-old News of the World, and the resignation of two top police officers.

Others arrested and bailed included ex-editor Andy Coulson, ex-assistant editor Ian Edmondson, ex-chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, journalists James Weatherup and Terenia Taras, an unnamed 63-year-old man, and ex-royal editor Clive Goodman.

Comedian who threw a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch jailed for six weeks
Pie thrower Jonnie 'Marbles' says he will appeal against the sentence
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 11:46 PM on 2nd August 2011



A comedian who threw a foam pie into the face of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was jailed for six weeks yesterday.
Jonathan May-Bowles, 26, attacked the 80-year-old chief executive and chairman of News Corporation as he gave evidence to MPs about the hacking scandal that has engulfed his company, calling him a ‘naughty billionaire’.
May-Bowles - also known as Jonnie Marbles - from Windsor, Berkshire, was ordered to pay £250 costs at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court, and a £15 victim surcharge.



Jonnie 'Marbles' seen arriving with an unidentified friend at Westminster Magistrates' Court where he was sentenced to six weeks in prison



Attack: Jonathan May-Bowles (left) aims a shaving foam pie at Rupert Murdoch as he gives evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport committee
The part-time stand-up comic claimed to be following a century-old tradition of harmless slapstick protest against powerful figures.
But a judge condemned him for interrupting the ‘dignity’ of Parliamentary proceedings that were of ‘huge importance’.
Passing sentence at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in central London, district judge Daphne Wickham said May-Bowles would serve three weeks in prison.
She said: 'This is a parliamentary process, which as you know conducts itself with dignity and in a civilised fashion,' she said.
'Everybody else in the room expected that, with one exception - you.
'You attended those proceedings with only one intention, to disrupt them.'
The judge said she took into account the fear of injury felt by Mr Murdoch, who could not have known what was in the foam pie.
Wearing a checked lumberjack shirt and black jeans, May-Bowles stood in the dock without reacting as sentence was passed.
May-Bowles had admitted the offence and pleaded guilty to two charges.
During his hearings, Rav Chodha, prosecuting, said that, on July 19, May-Bowles made his way through the Wilson room in Portcullis House to attack the News Corporation boss and used threatening, abusive or insulting words and behaviour.
Supported in court by a group of friends, he said he would appeal against the six week sentence.
In a statement read to the court by prosecutor Malachy Pakenham, Mr Murdoch said: 'I was approached by an unknown male who assaulted me by throwing a paper plate with shaving foam on it at me. The shaving foam made contact with my face and clothing.'



Leaping to his defence: The media tycoon's wife Wendi Deng (in a pink jacket) aims a slap at him



Rupert Murdoch and son James give evidence to the Select Committee as Wendi, in pink jacket, sits behind
According to one witness sitting behind Mr Murdoch, the May-Bowles 'appeared to be paying very little attention to the questions and answers - at times his eyes were closed and he appeared to be dozing.'
But, as the hearing was about to end at about 5pm, the comedian 'got up very suddenly' reached into a black carrier bag, pulled out a paper plate and thrust it into Mr Murdoch's face.
May-Bowles told police he had smuggled in the plate and shaving foam wrapped in an old shirt, which he then dumped.
He was arrested and taken to Charing Cross Police Station, where he refused to answer questions from officers.
Tim Greaves, defending, said May-Bowles would appeal against the 'excessive' sentence saying the comedian had been protesting against the Murdoch-owned News International organisation.


Read more: Rupert Murdoch pie attacker Jonathan May-Bowles jailed for 6 weeks | Mail Online

From the photos it seems the woman in the grey suit was the first to "protect" the old geezer.

"The media tycoon's wife Wendi Deng (in a pink jacket) " seems a little behind the curve.

Originally Posted by crippen

Comedian who threw a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch jailed for six weeks

I think I'd be throwing custard pies at the magistrates to get a bit longer.

^Not a pretty sight is she.

Surprised there are any spare coppers...

10 August 2011 Last updated at 13:29 GMT

New arrest in phone-hacking inquiry


A 61-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of phone hacking, Scotland Yard has said.
He was arrested after visiting a police station by appointment by officers from the Metropolitan Police's hacking investigation, Operation Weeting.
He was arrested on suspicion of unlawful interception of communications and on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications.
The phone-hacking scandal prompted the closure of the News of the World.

Link