I was going to post that the other day--that is, yesterday after hearing it on BBC News Hour--but when I started to describe it a string of curses and swear words I never knew existed began to appear and then I black out and woke up in a sewer next to man who asked me if I made Hircine my personal lord and savior. Then I totally got out of there.
"Yes, I received and replied to that email saying how serious things were. But at no point after replying did I stop and read the content of the earlier emails, nor learn of it in the meeting that I scheduled on the subject the next week, or during three years following."
If James Murdoch was any more full of shit you'd be able to smell him from Mars. It would be delicious if they caught him in a lie directly by hacking his phone.
He has previously denied ever hacking a phone, telling someone else to, or publishing a story obtained by hacking.
[...]
In August, it emerged that Heather Mills - former wife of Sir Paul McCartney - had alleged that a senior Mirror Group journalist admitted to her in 2001 that he had hacked into her voicemail.
The senior journalist referred to by Ms Mills is known not to be Mr Morgan. But the message in question appeared to be the same as one that he admitted to having listened to in a Daily Mail article in 2006.
In a statement issued in August, he said Ms Mills' claims were "unsubstantiated", adding: "To reiterate, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone."
I wish they'd linked to the article, even if it did mean linking to the Daily Mail's website. Even so, here it is. Specifically:
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' into the answerphone.
Those are his own words in 2006... Wasn't there a study recently that after a while, people begin to believe their own lies?
The Time admitted that one of their journalists had been internally disciplined for phone hacking in 2009. They have not released any further details publicly, but some people tied this into the 2009 outing of NightJack, an anonymous police blogger who had to quit after his identity became public and he was disciplined by his superiors.
At the time there was a high court case that centred on an extremely lengthy proof that you could deduce NightJack's identity from public postings on his blog. The case was so convoluted that there has been serious speculation it was retroactive constructed. If you knew the identity and worked backwards you could find enough evidence but if you didn't know what was significant you probably would never know where to start.
This was combined with the journalist behind the story having a history of computer hacking, being suspended while at university for hacking the network.
Now the two have been combined. The Guardian (who, ironically, the journalist now writes for) have identified the 2009 hacker as the same man who made the NightJack case. They have explicitly stated that he hacked (well, blagged; guessing security questions is hardly hacking) into NightJack's Hotmail account.
All in all it wouldn't be that huge a deal, given they did discipline the journalist for the hacking, but the Times also took the case to the high court. It wasn't the journalist, it was the Times making the case. The Times is responsible for the whole convoluted case that the identity could be deduced from public information. It seems this entire defence was a fabrication. There is a strong potential someone committed perjury.
It's also notable that their disciplining of the journalist was based on their rejecting his public interest argument. Despite that, and apparently being aware that the story was sourced by hacking, they went ahead and published the story as a major exclusive. I don't really see how that works.
The Met said the arrests, part of Operation Elveden, were prompted by information given to police by News Corporation.
A BBC source said this was an effort aimed at "draining the swamp" so as to restore journalistic integrity at News International titles.
News Corporation and its Management and Standards Committee (MSC) issued a statement following the arrests saying it had made a commitment last summer that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated.
... am I the only one having visions of the end of Casino - the bosses agree to have a few underlings bumped off so their hands stay clean when investigated? (Yes, I know this is making an assumption...)
Wouldn't be surprised, sacrifice the peons in order to keep and the king and prince in power. It's really sad to see how useless justice can be sometimes.
A hard copy of the email was found in a storage crate at News International's old Wapping offices in November 2011 during a search by Linklaters and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), it said.
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Ok, it's not really that funny to an outsider, but things like that make and break lawsuits.
Here's the explanation for why I find this so funny and why the deleting of the actual email isn't likely to matter.
There's a legal doctrine called spoliation of evidence. It only really applies in civil cases, and the essence of the doctrine is that if you knew there was likely to be a lawsuit and you destroyed evidence (or allowed it to be destroyed), the Court can assume, and instruct a jury to assume that whatever that evidence showed would have been bad for you. Then the other side basically gets to make up the worst thing they can imagine would have been in that email and talk about it.
On the other side, if you're bringing a lawsuit and destroy bad evidence, but keep good evidence, the defense can argue you denied them the ability to make a defense, and can sometimes even get the case dismissed.
However, there's one big exception to this rule. That is "document retention policies."
I'm sure some of you have worked in big corporations, and I an equally sure that those corporations had email guidelines such that your email would be automatically archived after X days, and automatically deleted after Y days.
Why do they do this? well, not having to constantly upgrade email servers is one reason. Another reason is that if they get sued, the other side might demand that they search through all the corporate emails and produce all the emails that talk about keyword "X."
If they deliberately deleted emails on X? they could be in trouble.
On the other hand, if they had a policy that ALL their emails get deleted after 90 days and those might or might not have included emails on X, well then they're probably fine, and the other side's out of luck.
Of course, that all goes to shit when someone prints out an email and sticks it in a file.
And of course, the Sun was totally clean of the things that got the News of the World shut down... no, wait - 10 arrests so far. But at least those journalists aren't there now... no, wait -
Last week, Mr Murdoch lifted the suspensions of the arrested workers
So in short,
-Murdoch will have a Sunday tabloid -Journalists who've used the methods that got NotW shut down will be working on it
It seems that the longer this gets strung out, the more likely it is that Murdoch Sr and Murdoch Jr will walk away clean.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
He's all over the news right now (again). He and his son will appear at an inquiry next week and there's that lawyer hinting that lawsuits over the phone hacking scandal may be launched in the US.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This evidence session was an opportunity Rupert Murdoch declared "to put certain myths to bed".
High up on his list was the idea that he uses his papers and his contact with politicians to further his commercial ambitions. Hitting the desk at one point, he insisted, "In 10 years I never asked Mr Blair for anything. Nor did I receive any favours".
Rupert Murdoch, according to Rupert Murdoch, is a man who doesn't know many politicians and who has never asked a PM for anything. His proudest achievement is clearly the success of the Sun newspaper - ministers seeking an insight into his thinking should read the tabloid's editorials.
The evidence of one Murdoch has already imperilled the political future of one cabinet minister. The evidence of another, has not so far badly damaged the standing of any others.
But there's always tomorrow.
Rupert Murdoch, after all, is a man who by his own admission, is not good at holding his tongue.
