Lost amidst all of the press focus on the Florida primaries is a Sunday Guardian UK article by Nick Davies, the reporter whose dogged multi-year probe of the Murdoch press empire's phone hacking led to intense investigations by the British government and Scotland Yard.
In a Sunday article headlined Mysteries of Data Pool 3 Give Rupert Murdoch a Whole New Headache, Davies reveals that investigators are now going through a vast collection of computer files, supplied by the Murdoch organization under intense pressure (and after earlier corporate claims that much of the material had been either routinely deleted or "lost in transit").
The contents of this treasure trove include literally millions of e-mails and other material so vast that police are reduced to searching through it for key words. What they find could produce the weapons that spell the end of the Murdoch empire. More details below the squiggle:
Davies says this new development "may be the moment when the scandal that closed (Murdoch's) News of the World started to pose a potential threat to at least one of (his) three other UK (papers) -- the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times."
Four more Murdoch journalists associated with these papers were arrested Saturday, but have not been charged. But Davies said the Murdoch organization has been facing enormous legal and political pressure.
Last July, the Guardian reported police suspicions that Murdoch staff had deliberately destroyed huge quantities of e-mail archives. In 2009, the company had apparently planned a routine house cleaning of its electronic files, but did not follow through.
However in 2010 when actress Sienna Miller filed a suit into whether her voicemail had been hacked, her solicitors asked News International to "preserve all documents" relating to her file. Three days after that, an "internal message" (no word on who sent it) "...pressed for the e-mails to be deleted 'urgently'." The 2009 plan was then put into motion. Around the end of the year a News of the World Editor told the court that the files had been "lost en route to Mumbai." Another company statement told the court the company could not retrieve e-mails more than 6 months old.
In January of 2011, more deletions took place according to investigators, but by then, investigators were turning up the pressure. In March of last year, executives apologized to the court, saying that the files had not been lost and could be retrieved as far back as 2005. And facing mounting evidence, Murdoch told his staff to give the supposedly lost material to investigators.
Technicians began the work of restoration in October and completed the formation of what is now known as Data Pool 3 by December.
Davies says the possibilities are fascinating. It includes invoices, reporter expense claims, bank and phone records as well as e-mails.
For News International, Data Pool 3 is a nightmare. Firstly, no one know what is in there. All they can do is wait and see how bad it gets.
Second, the police clearly believe it may yield new evidence of the crimes they set out to investigate (snip - including fishing for confidential phone, bank and tax records, voice and e-mail jacking and bribing police.)
Third – and most nightmarish – Data Pool 3 could yield evidence of attempts to destroy evidence the high court and police were seeking. Data Pool 3 itself was apparently deliberately deleted from News International's servers.
If proved (snip) it could see the courts imposing long prison sentences; and because it could have been sanctioned by senior employees and directors.
As Davies notes, Data Pool 3 is so huge, nobody really knows what it contains. Did senior Murdoch executives order destruction of evidence? Will it identify new victims of Murdoch hacking who could then come forward to make legal claims against the corporation? The possibilities are fascinating. The ultimate question?
Will Data Pool 3 contain the smoking gun that spells an end to the Murdoch empire?