The FOTHOM story may simmer over the summer, but have no fears it will go away. Most of Europe goes away in August, and though we're not as bad as the French, don't be surprised to see a lack of live updates in the Guardian. Even journalists need a break, and no doubt the lawyers are off to Tuscany for most the month.
But the biggest police operations in the UK at the moment have not stopped, and apart from the phone hacking and police corruption, they're now locking at computer hacking (through Trojan horses) and other forms of blagging and covert surveillance. This will only get worse....
Meanwhile, some news from the US
Eric Holder Takes the 9/11 Hacking Allegations Seriously
I've learned from some the meta around here that many Kossacks think Holder will back off any contentious investigation, and that the US justice system (though much harsher on hacking in terms of penalties) more likely to be swayed by money. Well this breaking news from Reuters might indicate otherwise
Attorney General Eric Holder will reassure families of September 11 victims when he meets them later this month that the Justice Department is seriously investigating allegations that News Corp reporters tried to hack victims' phones.
"I'll certainly want to hear what they have to say with regard to their concerns and, to the extent that I can share information with them, I will," Holder said on Wednesday.
"I will try to reassure them that this is something we are taking seriously," he told reporters.
Holder will meet with the families on August 24 at their request following a report in Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper that reporters with the rival News of the World had offered to pay a New York police officer for private phone records of some victims of the 2001 attacks.
For those who want more on the 9/11 victims allegation, here's a link to the breaking FOTHOM diary here - and do check out the comments which are often more informative than my diary. Oh. And feel free to add the tag
Let me reiterate: James and Rupert Murdoch are US citizens. Newscorp is incorporated in the States. It's in your country that the stake will finally be driven through the corrupt and monopolistic practices that have deformed the press in the UK for 40 years, and your broadcast news for two decades
Meanwhile, I'll update below the fold with brief profile of two of the people - a Brit and a Yank - who have heroically taken the fight to Murdoch's empire, despite intimidations and threats.
Two Heroes who Withstood the Newscorp Bullying: Watson and Wolff
Bluestateredhead had a great diary this morning which you might have missed, profiling the British Labour MP, Tom Watson, who has been dogged in pursuit of this hacking scandal for several years. The whole piece is worth a read. But it's worth highlighting this:
In 2009, he was falsely accused of involvement in the infamous plan to set up an unseemly website for anti-Tory political gossip known as "Red Rag", and returned from a trip to Cornwall to find his next-door neighbour upset after the latter's bins had been rooted through. This, he says, was time of "constant anxiety" and "sleepless nights": he considered standing down as an MP, but settled for returning to the backbenches.
In response to the Red Rag accusations, he took legal action against the Sun and the Mail on Sunday. In short order, the Mail on Sunday apologised for the Red Rag story and paid him damages (the Sun soon followed suit), Watson joined the culture, media and sport select committee, and the Guardian broke the first stories about phone hacking at the News of the World running wider than a "rogue reporter", and big pay-offs to victims – all of which fed into a watershed select committee hearing on 21 July 2009.
That day, Watson and his colleagues interviewed four key people: Stuart Kuttner, who had just resigned as managing editor of the News of the World (and who yesterday became the latest NI figure to be arrested as part of Operation Weeting), former editor Andy Coulson (by then Cameron's head of communications), the then News of the World editor Colin Myler, and the company's legal head Tom Crone (who left the company three weeks ago). The latter had tried to have Watson excluded from the hearing on account of his legal action against the Sun, which gave the proceedings an additional charge. Watson's key questions focused on the £700,000 payment NI had made to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of footballers' union the PFA, though by his own admission, he wasn't quite sure what he was doing.
Watson was clearly targeted by News International from the get-go, and they nearly persuaded him to leave Parliament. Now here's the interesting thing. I know about the Red Rag scandal because the site in question, Labour List, is my main UK blogging base.
In essence, the then proprietor of the site was caught in an email exchange with a senior government aide, talking about creating a web site, Red Rag, to target Tory Politicians, mainly with personal smears.
This was exposed by the blogger Guido Fawkes, Paul Staines, who is no stranger himself to the politics of personal destruction. As a result, McBride and Draper's careers were finished, and falsely implicated in the scam, so nearly was Tom Watson.
As I said in the comment to Bluestateredhead
In Watson's case, he was mistakenly associated with the notorious red rag scandal which I know something about, because it concerns my UK blogging home: Labourlist. The scandal revolved around an email which the founder, Derek Draper, apparently received from one of Brown's aides, Damian McBride.
As the hacking scandal goes deeper into computer hacking and other forms of surveillance, we've all got to ask ourselves... how did that email come out.
The police investigation, Operation Weeting, is now locking at allegations of computer hacking as well as phone hacking. The Red Rag saga becomes all the more interesting in that light
Piers Morgan in Trouble
The profile of Michael Wolff and his personal trouble with the New York Post and Newscorp is going to have to wait. It's clear from various tweets that your least favourite CNN anchor, famously known as Piers Moron here, is in trouble.
Though he was erroneously accused of fessing up to phone hacking in his autobiography by MP Louse Mensch, there are various online records of him clearly listening in to phone conversations between our former football manager, Sven Goran Eriksonn, and the TV presenter Ulrika Johnson. More dangerously, Piers has often joked about listening to Paul McCartney plangently singing 'we can work it out' in a message to Heather Mills during their bust-up.
“Stories soon emerged that the marriage was in trouble – at 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’…”
Pwned. Heather Mills - not a woman to mess with - is pushing further, andBBC Newsnight is broadcasting an investigative piece tonight
Time to get a lawyer, Piers. As Gawyer has just written:
Piers Morgan Is a Lying Liar
Piers Morgan has repeatedly claimed—falsely!—that he never countenanced or encountered voicemail hacking during his tenure as editor of the Daily Mirror. Now Heather Mills has come forward to claim that a reporter for the Mirror's parent company confessed to her in 2001 that the paper had surreptitiously gained access to a voicemail message Paul McCartney left for her after the couple had a fight. The trouble for Morgan is that he openly admitted to having listened to that very voicemail message—recounting it in detail—in 2007. Whoops.
Mills told the BBC's Newsnight that in 2001—while Morgan was the editor of the Daily Mirror—a "senior reporter for the Mirror Group," which owns the paper, admitted to her that he had hacked into her voicemail.
Ms. Mills told Newsnight that in early 2001 she had a row with her then-boyfriend Sir Paul McCartney who later left a conciliatory message on her voicemail while she was away in India.
According to Ms. Mills, afterwards a senior Mirror Group Newspapers journalist rang her and "started quoting verbatim the messages from my machine".
Ms. Mills said she challenged the journalist saying: "You've obviously hacked my phone and if you do anything with this story... I'll go to the police."
She said they responded: "OK, OK, yeah we did hear it on your voice messages, I won't run it."
IMPORTANT US UPDATE: Murdoch in US Schools
One thing in today's just released Private Eye is an exploration of Rupert Murdoch's many meetings with our current Education Minister (and former NI op-ed Columnist) Michael Gove. As Political Scrapbook reports
Last year, News Corp purchased Wireless Generation, a company which makes teaching assistance software, and hired former New York schools Chancellor Joel Klein to head it up. In a June interview with the Times, Murdoch seemed almost giddy at the prospects made available by his new acquisition:
You can get by with half as many teachers
As we reported in last month, Wireless Generation was awarded multi-million dollar no-bid contracts to provide these very systems to the New York school system.
Wireless network runs the ARIS system which is supposed to track student attendance, grades etc. From the earlier Political Scrapbook piece
Many of Gove’s ideas for his free schools pet project have been borrowed from Klein, a former chancellor of the New York City school system. He came to the UK in January at Gove’s invitation to speak at the government’s Free Schools Conference, and to visit the King Solomon academy, run by a potential free schools operator.
At the conference, Klein gushed about his pal:
“This country is so lucky to have a man with Michael’s vision and commitment … In my world that makes you a hero, my friend.”
Klein stepped down from his position as schools Chancellor last year, walking straight into a $2m a year job as CEO of News Corporation’s education division. Last month, News Corp were awarded a $27m bid-free contract by the state of New York to develop software to track student test scores.
Klein has, in recent days been brought into Rupert Murdoch’s inner circle, to offer guidance on the phone hacking scandal. Murdoch has formed a “management and standards committee” to fight the crisis, which will report directly to Klein.
Private Eye jokes that perhaps Newscorp is not the place to store the private information of millions of American schoolchildren
IMPORTANT US UPDATE 2: Nick Davies thinks Murdoch Journalists Did Same Things in US
In a previous FATHOM diary, I celebrated the arrival of the Guardian's pioneering investigative journalist Nick Davies in the US. This could hit Newscorp at its home base. So before I retire for the night, enjoy this interview with Nick Davies just up on The Daily Beast. And check the money quote. He wouldn't be surprised if....
Murdoch journalists operating in the United States had been doing some of the same things
More importantly, given the behaviour of our political parties both sides of the Atlantic, and the relationship with banks (who leveraged Murdoch from the get-go BTW) Davies makes a point about the Fall of the House of Murdoch Hackgate scandal;
It's isn't about bad journalism.... it's about power elites.
What an awesome, sane, persistent and impressive guy Davies is. Finally we have our Woodward/Bernstein. Makes me proud to be British (Welsh Armenian Londoner)