This is a bit of a mind-blower: Operation Weeting just contacted Peter Jukes' closest sibling today, to inform him/her that he/she (undisclosed for legal purposes) was in Mulcaire's infamous notebook.
From Peter Jukes:
A close sibling. In fact my closet sibling. And his/her land line. The police have given him/her all sorts of numbers to contact for legal redress. They wouldn't give out the name of the target they think he/she was hacked for (remember Mulcaire always targeted the phones of friends and associates because that's where the messages would be left) but the police indicated it was to do with TV drama, and that I was the most likely secondary target.
Just goes to show how fucking extensive this was. I was a mid level drama writer circa 2000-2003 when Mulcaire operated, with a working knowledge and loose friendships with some well known actors.
As many of you know, Peter is now heroically covering the FOTHOM scandal for The Daily Beast. He is currently working on a piece for Newsweek (sister outfit of The Daily Beast) about Rebekah Brooks, the frizzy red-haired ex-chief of Murdoch's UK newspaper business.
My guess is that Peter and/or his friends and family are currently being hacked by Rupert's henchmen. Perhaps they're waiting for this diary to go up, as Peter and I have just been emailing about it.
In other FOTHOM news, News Corp. has been taking a beating in the stock market, losing nearly 5% of market capitalization over just yesterday and today.
http://topics.nytimes.com/...
Yippee! Though neither Peter nor I know exactly why this is happening.
Please support the book that Peter is writing and I am illustrating, THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF MURDOCH. Here is where, with a small contribution, you can still get your name in the printed book:
http://unbound.co.uk/...
UPDATE 1: From Brit (Jukes) himself in the comments:
Great you diaried this, but lest anyone misconstrue
1. This was over five years ago, so it wasn't anything to do with the book
2. They would have only tried to get to me to get to someone much more interesting.
However, I still find it mind blowing, and of course suspect I could also be contacted by Operation Weeting soon.
That my innocent sibling (a school teacher) could have their privacy invaded like this makes me feel that we did live in privatised corporate version of a Stasi state.
UPDATE 2: From
Empower Ink in the comments (and also an h/t to
Creosote):
I read that Guido Fawkes has published online 1,000+ e-mails (out of 14k+) from the 2003 Motorman Operation which revealed the names of NI journalists allegedly requesting PI services, and much more.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
Please check the comments below for intrigue-rich links on this found by
ceebs and
Empower Ink...